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CONTENTS. 



introduction . . 

a midnight meeting 

seeing a man hanged 

catherine-street 

the bal masque 

up the hatmarket 

the canterbury hall 

ratcliffe-highway 

judge and jury clubs 

the caye of harmony 

discussion clubs 

the cyder cellars 

leicester-square 

dr. Johnson's tayern 

the sporting public-house 



PAGE 
1 

40 

53 

64 

71 

78 

88 

97 

107 

114 

121 

130 

137 

145 

153 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

the public-house with a billiard-boom . . 159 

the respectable public-house . . . . 165 

night-houses . . . . . . . . 171 

boxing night . . . . . . . . 182 

the mogul . . . . . . . . 189 

caldwell's . . . . . . . . 196 

cremorne . . . . . . . . 207 

the costermongers' free-and-easy . . 219 

the police-court . . , . . . 230 

the eagle tatern . . . . . . 240 

highbury barn . . . . . . . . 249 

THE LUNATIC ASYLUM . . . . . . 256 




THE 



NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 



IjSTTEODUCTIOX. 



It is said of a stranger who came to London for 
the first time, and took up his quarters in one of 
the most crowded city streets, that he remained 
standing at the door the whole of the first day of 
his London existence, because he waited until the 
crowd had gone. A man, says Max Schlesinger, 
who would do that, ought to rise and go to bed 
with the owl. The owl is the symbol of wisdom ; 
for once I would prevail upon the reader to do 
as the owls do, and become wise as they. You 
may live at Clapham all your life, come into 

B 



Z THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

the city every day, attend on a gospel ministry, 
as the slang phrase is, — for it is not only wicked 
people that talk slang, — and know no more of 
London than the British public do of Timbuc- 
too. 

Think of what London is. At the census of 1851 
there were 2,362,236 persons of both sexes in it ; 
1,106,558 males, of whom 146,449 were under 
5 years of age ; and 1,255,678 females, of whom 
147,173 were under 5 years of age. The un- 
married males were 679,380, ditto females 
735,871 ; the married men were 399,098, the 
wives 409,731 ; the widowers were 37,080, the 
widows 110,076. On the night of the census 
there were 28,598 husbands whose wives were 
not with them, and 39,231 wives mourning their 
absent lords. In 1856 the number of children 
born in London was 86,833, only one in 25 
of which is illegitimate; in the same period 
56,786 persons died. The Registrar- General 
assumes that, with the additional births, and 
by the fact of soldiers and sailors returning from 
the seat of war, and of persons engaged in 
peaceful pursuits settling in the capital, suste- 
nance, clothing, and house accommodation must 
now be found in London for about 60,000 in- 



STATE OF THE STREETS. 6 

habitants more than it contained at the end of 
1855. Think of that — the population of a large 
city absorbed in London, and no perceptible in- 
convenience occasioned by it ! Houses are still 
to let ; there are still the usual tickets hung up 
in windows in quiet neighbourhoods, intimat- 
ing that apartments furnished for the use of 
single gentlemen can be had within ; the country 
still supplies the town with meat and bread, and 
we hear of no starvation in consequence of de- 
ficient supply. London is the healthiest city in 
the world. The city death-rate, according to 
Dr. Letheby's report for 1857, is 22*5 per 1000, 
and in all England it is 22-2. During the last 
ten years the annual deaths have been on the 
average 25 to 1000 of the population, in 1856 
the proportion was 22 to 1000 ; half of 
the deaths that happen on an average in 
London between the ages of 20 and 40 are 
from consumption and diseases of the respiratory 
organs. The Registrar traces this to the state 
of the streets. He says : " There can be no 
doubt that the dirty dust suspended in the air 
that the people of London breathe often excites 
diseases of the respiratory organs. The dirt of 
the streets is produced and ground now by in- 
B 2 



4 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

numerable horses, omnibuses, and carriages, and 
then beat up in fine dust, which fills the mouth, 
and inevitably enters the air passages in large 
quantities. The dust is not removed every day, 
but, saturated with water in the great thorough- 
fares, sometimes ferments in damp weather, and 
at other times ascends again under the heat of 
the summer sun as atmospheric dust." 

London, says Henry Mayhew, may be safely 
asserted to be the most densely populated city in 
all the world ; containing one-fourth more people 
than Pekin, and two-thirds more than Paris — 
more than twice as many as Constantinople — 
four times as many as St Petersburg — five times 
as many as Vienna, or New York, or Madrid — 
nearly seven times as many as Berlin — eight 
times as many as Amsterdam — nine times as 
many as Rome — fifteen times as many as Co- 
penhagen — and seventeen times as many as Stock- 
holm. " London, 5 ' says Horace Say, " c'est une 
province couverte de maisons." It covers an 
area of 122 square miles in extent, or 78,029 
statute acres ; and contains 327,391 houses. 
Annually 4000 new houses are in course of 
erection. The continuous line of buildings 
stretching from High gate to Camberwell is said 



L 



IMMENSITY OF THE POPULATION. 5 

to be 12 miles long. It is computed if the build- 
ings were set in a row they would reach across 
the whole of England and France, from York 
to the Pyrenees. Of the entire house tax of 
£690,000 a year levied in England, nearly one 
half, 333,000, is paid by the metropolis. 

When the stone in Panyer's Alley was placed 
on its site three centuries since, the circumfer- 
ence was about five miles. At present, however, 
to make a pedestrian expedition around the me- 
tropolis would, to most persons, be an undertak- 
ing of some importance, as may be seen by re- 
ferring to the following particulars, which have 
been gathered from a recently published map : — 
From Chiswick to Kentish-town, 12 miles ; from 
Kentish-town to Mill wall, 17J miles ; from Mill- 
wall to Chiswick, 27 miles — total, 57J miles, 
very nearly three days' journey, at the rate of 
20 miles a day ; and it will be observed that in 
the line drawn, Battersea, Clapham, Canning- 
town, and many other places, which even at 
present can be scarcely said to be separated 
from London, have been left out. "As the 
crow would fly " across streets and houses from 
the point whence we started at Chiswick to the 
farthest east, the distance is nearly eleven miles, 



6 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

and the greatest wilth from north to south up- 
wards of seven miles. The metropolis is divided 
into 38 different poor-law districts, some of 
them parishes, and some of them unions, but 
each managing separately their own poor. Of 
these, 27 are in Middlesex, two in Kent, and 
nine in Surrey. Of the 27 in Middlesex, 10 
are unions of various extent ; 17 are single 
parishes, many of them of great extent, and 
comprising a large amount of property and 
population. The unions in Middlesex consist 
of a small number of parishes, two consisting of 
two parishes, two of three, one of five, one of 
four, one of six, one of seven, and one of nine 
parishes. The city of London consists of 98 
parishes, some of them small in extent, but con- 
taining a large amount of property and popula- 
tion. The unions in Kent consist of four and 
seven parishes. Of the nine] in Surrey three 
are unions, consisting, one of two parishes, 
another of three, and the third of six parishes. 
The remaining six are all single parishes, 
each administering its own affairs. The total 
population of these districts was estimated in 
1857 by the Registrar- General to be 2,800,000 ; 
the average number of paupers to be dealt with 



THE POPULATION. 7 

105,000 ; the amount of expenditure for the year 
ending Lady-day, 1856, was £875,000 ; and the 
net rateable value of the property contributing 
to the relief of the poor was £14,000,000. In 
the parish of St. George's in the East — out of a 
population of 50,000 persons — 40,000 are en- 
tirely dependent on their daily labour. The 
proportion which the metropolis bore to the 
whole of England and Wales was, as to po- 
pulation, one-eighth ; as to pauperism, one- 
twelfth. Last winter 150,000 poor were thrown 
on charity for support in consequence of the frost. 
London has 10,500 distinct streets, squares, 
circuses, crescents, terraces, villas, rows, build- 
ings, places, lanes, courts, alleys, mews, yards, 
rents. The paved streets of London, according 
to a return published in 1856, number over 
5000, and exceed 2000 miles in length ; the 
cost of this paved roading was 14 millions, and 
the repairs cost £1,800,000 per annum. The 
Post Office employs 3200 officials in London 
alone. London contains 1900 miles of gas 
pipes, with a capital of nearly £4,000,000 spent 
in the preparation of gas. The cost of gas- 
lighting is two million pounds a year, and nearly 
one million tons of coals are consumed. It has 



8 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

360,000 lights ; and 13,000,000 cubic feet of 
gas are burnt every night. Along these streets 
the enormous quantity of upwards of 80 
millions of gallons of water rush for the 
supply of the inhabitants, being nearly double 
what it was in 1845. Mr May hew says, if the 
entire people of the capital were to be drawn up 
in marching order, two and two, the length of 
the great army of Londoners would be no less 
than 670 miles, and supposing them to move at 
the rate of three miles an hour, it would require 
more than nine days and nights for the average 
population to pass by. To accommodate this 
crowd, 125,000 vehicles pass through the tho- 
roughfares in the course of 12 hours ; at the pre- 
sent time there are upwards of 800 omnibuses run- 
ning along various routes in the metropolis, and of 
this number 595 are the property of the London 
General Omnibus Company. 600 omnibuses, 
with horses and harness and goodwill, were 
purchased by the company for a sum of £400,000, 
or for very nearly £700 for each vehicle. 
The 595 omnibuses of the company ran in Lon- 
don, in the week ending 31st of October, 1857, 
not less than 222,779 miles, or nearly ten times 
the circumference of the globe, and they carried 



LONDON TRAFFIC. 9 

not less than 920,000 passengers. Assuming 
that the remaining one-fourth of the London 
omnibuses, not belonging to the company, car- 
ried an equal proportion, we shall have, as the 
travelling portion of the population of London, 
1,115,000 persons. In the year 1856 the total 
revenue derived from the duty on omnibuses with- 
in the area of the great metropolis amounted to 
£74,270 against £85,965 in 1855, and £108,051 
in 1854. The revenue from cabs in the metropolis 
was £82,110 against £75,281, and £64,210 in 
1854. Of the revenue on omnibuses last year, 
£69,493 accrued from mileage duty, £3791 from 
license duty, and £983 from drivers' and conduct- 
ors' licenses. As regards the cab duty, £74,736 
accrued from weekly duty, £5292 from license 
duty, and £2081 from drivers' and watermen's 
licenses. In London there are 4700 cabs, and 
the passengers in public vehicles last year spent 
£6000 per day. In 1857, 13,572,000 persons 
left the trains from the London Bridge Station. 
In 1855 the Thames boat traffic between London 
Bridge on both sides taken in two days in May, 
at the instance of Sir Joseph Paxton, gave an 
average of 22,332 per day. 60,000 foot pas- 
sengers and 18,000 vehicles cross London 



10 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Bridge daily between eight in the morning and 
eight at night. According to Mr. Commissioner 
Harvey, on one occasion 706,621 individuals 
passed into the City by its various entrances 
during the twenty-four hours. Of this number 
49,242 only entered during the night. As the 
day selected for enumeration was free from any 
extraordinary attraction to the City, there can 
be no doubt that the return furnishes a fair esti- 
mate of the average daily influx. How the city 
residents are crowded together is apparent when 
I state that in a space of one square mile in the 
City there is compressed a population of 120,000 
souls. 

The number of persons, says the Registrar- 
General, who died in 1856, in 116 public 
institutions, such as workhouses and hos- 
pitals, was 10,381. It is really shocking 
to think, and a deep stigma on the people, 
— or on the artificial arrangements of so- 
ciety, by which so much poverty is perpetu- 
ated, — that nearly one person out of five, who 
died that year, closed his days under a roof pro- 
vided by law or public charity. In 1856 the 
police report 147 suicides. Dr. Wakley says, 
4000 infants die annually of neglect. It is 



DEATHS IN LONDON. 11 

calculated 500 people are drowned in the 
Thames every year. In London the mere 
money cost of preventible disease is estimated, 
by competent medical authority, at a million a 
year. In 1859 there were 18,105 unnatural 
deaths, including 16,000 preventible deaths 
from impure air. Dr. Lyon Playfair calcu- 
lates each preventible death represents at least 
twenty cases of preventible sickness. In the 
same year fifty-one were killed, and 682 in- 
jured by carriages of various kinds running 
over them. In the first week of 1857 there 
were five deaths from intemperance alone. How 
much wretchedness lies in these facts, — for the 
deaths from actual intemperance bear but a 
small proportion to the deaths induced by the 
immoderate use of intoxicating liquors ; and of 
the 500 drowned, by far the larger class, we 
have every reason to believe, are of the number 
of whom Hood wrote — 

"Mad with life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery- 
Swift to be hurl'd — - 

Anywhere, anywhere, 
Out of the world!" 

A meeting was held a year or two since of 

the unemployed, chiefly the carpenters, brick- 



12 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

layers, and bricklayers' labourers of the me- 
tropolis, in which, it was stated that their num- 
ber — though very probably there may be some 
exaggeration here — is 35,000. If these men 
are married and have families, we get a further 
idea of the deep distress in this wealthy and 
luxurious capital, — this capital where the gold 
of Australia, the jewels of Golconda, the silks 
and spices of the East, come for sale, and are 
lavished as freely on the most questionable 
purposes and persons as on the noblest speci- 
mens of humanity and the most glorious objects 
for which men care to live. Then think of the 
inmates of the lunatic asylums, and the poor- 
houses, and the hospitals, in most cases sent 
there as the result of their own ignorance or 
imprudence. On Christmas day the dinners 
provided at the workhouses for the inmates fed 
between 30 and 40,000. Add to these our 
prison population, and our criminal classes, and 
our prostitutes, — and what a picture we get of 
the Night Side of London, of the classes whose 
existence is a reproach or a curse ! 

According to the last reports, there were in 
London 143,000 vagrants admitted in one year 
into the casual wards of the workhouses. It 



CRIMINAL RETURNS. 13 

is hardly possible to give figures and be 
correct as to London crime, but very re- 
cently a series of returns, prepared by Mr. 
Pickering, the accountant at the Lord Mayor's 
Court, and bearing the signature of Sir R. Car- 
den, have been forwarded to the Home Office, 
showing the state of crime within the city of 
London during the year ending the 29th Sep- 
tember, 1860. From these we cull a few of the 
more interesting particulars. During the year, 
6151 persons in all, or 5174 males, and 977 
females, were proceeded against summarily, of 
whom 4172 males and 646 females were con- 
victed. By far the greater portion of them, or 
3420, were fined ; 2 were whipped, 247 ordered 
to find sureties, 38 (being deserters) were de- 
livered to the army or navy, and the rest were 
subjected to imprisonment varying from 14 days 
to six months. Of the persons so proceeded 
against, 44 were for aggravated assaults on 
women and children, 454 for common assaults, 
123 for assaults on peace officers, 22 for cruelty 
to animals, 349 for drunkenness, 52 for offences 
against the Mutiny Acts, 414 for the unlawful 
possession of goods, 39 for larceny by offenders 
under 16 years, 128 for begging, and 455 for 



14 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

frequenting places of public resort to commit 
felony. As to indictable crimes, 893 in the 
* aggregate were committed, and the number of 
persons apprehended was 569, or 444 males and 
125 females. Of these, 265 males and 37 
females were committed for trial. The offences 
under this category were, among others, child 
murder, 1 ; manslaughter, 3 ; rape, 1 ; bigamy, 
1 ; burglary and housebreaking, 17 ; breaking 
into shops and warehouses, 11 ; larceny to the 
value of £5 in dwelling-houses, 56 ; larceny 
from the person, 261 ; larceny by servants, 
113 ; simple larceny, 134 ; embezzlement, 61 ; 
attempting to commit suicide, 34 ; fraudulently 
obtaining goods by false pretences, 51 ; and 
uttering counterfeit coin, 44. The City Police 
establishment charges for the year amounted to 
£47,772 4s. 2d., of which £37,699 lis. 4d. was 
for salaries and pay; £2895 odd for clothing 
and accoutrements ; £2207 lis. 6d. for super- 
annuations and gratuities ; £3045 for station- 
house charges, printing, &c. ; and £1551 for 
miscellaneous charges. The population of the 
City proper, at the last census, was 127,869. 
The total number of persons borne on the police 
establishment, exclusive of one Commissioner, 



CRIMINAL RETURNS. 15 

is 627, of whom 516 are constables, 21 detect- 
ives, 64 sergeants, 14 inspectors, 1 superintend- 
ent, and 20 supernumerary constables. In the 
metropolis at large, as distinguished from the 
City, during the year ending September last, the 
aggregate number of crimes committed was 
11,195 ; 4864 persons were committed for 
trial ; and the number of known thieves at 
large was estimated at the startling figure of 
2765. 

The return of the metropolitan police for 1857, 
was 2825 brothels, and 8600 prostitutes. In the 
City, the number of such houses and persons is 
very small ; the prison population at any par- 
ticular time is 6000, costing for the year 
£170,000. Our juvenile thieves cost us £300 
a-piece. The average income of the London 
thief is estimated at £2 per week. Crime has 
its favourite haunts. It is proved the majority 
of wife-beaters come from Bethnal Green. 

Again, let us look at the classes whose labours 
and occupations and modes of life are inconsist- 
ent with health, or not favourable to any great 
development of moral principle. Almost 20,000 
persons are engaged in Sunday trading ; the 
number of ragged children is nearly 30,000; the 



16 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

number of families living in one room is esti- 
mated as high as 150,000. It appears from a 
report by Mr. Goderich, officer of health in the 
parish of Kensington, that in a place called the 
Potteries there are 1147 human beings and 
1041 pigs congregated within a space of less 
than nine acres, the present number of pigs be- 
ing below the usual average. The dwellings of 
a large proportion of the inhabitants of this 
locality are mere hovels with shattered roofs 
and unglazed windows, the floor is below the 
level of the external soil, which has been raised 
by excessive accumulations of filth of all kinds, 
and the walls are at all times partially damp 
and giving out pestilential gases, intolerable to 
those who have not been born among them, 
fatal to the health of those who have. Another 
portion of the miserable population has convert- 
ed old caravan bodies, removed in some cases 
from their wheels, into houses ; others have no 
other dwelling than ruinous post-chaise bodies, 
for which a rent of sixpence per week is paid. 
In one of the caravans eight persons dwell, 
among whom a child suffering from small-pox 
was battling with death at the time of Mr. 
Goderich's visit in March. In the winter of 






DWELLINGS OF THE POOR. 17 

1861 Mr. James Harvey, Chairman of the West 
London Union, wrote : 

" Some time since the relieving officer and one 
of the guardians of this Union visited Plumtree- 
court, Holborn, which contains 27 houses with- 
out back yards, and, with few exceptions, with- 
out back lights. These houses were occupied by 
676 men, women, and children. In one room, 
10 ft. by 13, and 8 ft. 6 in. high, there were 13 
persons living and sleeping, viz. 2 men, 5 wo- 
men, and 6 children. In another house 17 ft. 
long and 16 ft. wide (including the passage), 
with ground-floor, first-floor, and attic, there 
were 69 persons living and sleeping, with only 
one convenience in the basement. On another 
occasion, when our relieving officer visited a 
house in this court, between 12 and 1 o'clock in 
the morning, for the apprehension of a man 
who had deserted his wife, in attempting to go 
into one room he was compelled to wait until 
the inmates had risen from the floor behind the 
door, so that the door could be opened. The 
people lay so thick on the floor that he had to 
be cautious in stepping between them. In this 
room there was one child suffering from the 
measles and another from the small-pox. On 



18 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

opening the door the stench was so great that 
the police officer who accompanied him was 
obliged to withdraw. From this court alone 
the parish has had to pay extra fees to the 
medical officer for the confinement of an incre- 
dible number of young women and ' widows \ 
of illegitimate children. The cases continually 
being brought before our board of once respect- 
able women who have fallen under such con- 
ditions are truly heart-rending, and form one of 
the greatest difficulties with which boards of 
guardians have to deal." 

Mr. Timbs calculates the number of profes- 
sional beggars in London at 15,000, two-thirds 
of whom are Irish. 30,000 men, women, and 
children are employed in the costermonger 
trade ; besides, we have, according to Mr. May- 
hew, 2000 street sellers of green stuff, 4000 
street sellers of eatables and drinkables, 1000 
street sellers of stationery, 4000 street sellers of 
other articles, whose receipts are three millions 
sterling, and whose incomes may be put down 
at one. Let us extend our survey, and we shall 
not wonder that the public-houses — and the gin 
palaces — and the casinos — and the theatres — 
and the penny gaffs — and the lowest and vilest 



OCCUPATION OF THE POOR. 19 

places of resort in London, are full. In Spital- 
fields there are 70,000 weavers with but 10s. 
per week ; there are 22,479 tailors, 30,805 
shoemakers, 43,928 milliners ; seamstresses, 
21,210 ; bonnet-makers, 1769 ; cap-makers, 
1277. It is calculated some of these women 
can only earn 4d. a day by working from five 
in the morning till eight at night. What hard, 
wretched work is theirs ! 

In the first week of January, a year or two 
since, a poor woman, named Martha Duke, was 
brought up at the Thames police office, charged 
with attempting to commit suicide. She was a 
poor needle- woman, and found the misery of 
that mode of life greater than could be borne. 
Speaking not of this case in particular, but of 
needle- women in general, Mr. Burch, the resi- 
dent medical officer of the London Hospital, 
stated that "a large number of patients had 
been under his care, and he had carefully in- 
vestigated a considerable number of cases, and 
was satisfied that needle-women were the most 
ill-paid class of people and the most hard-work- 
ing on earth. They were miserably paid," he 
added, "and he knew that numbers of them, 
with constitutions broken down, earned from 3s. 
c 2 



20 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

to 4s. per week only, and for that scanty pit- 
tance were compelled to work from three o'clock 
in the morning till ten at night. They soon be- 
came enfeebled by insufficient diet and over- 
work, and when broken down either had re- 
course to suicide or prostitution." In 1844 the 
operative tailors instituted an inquiry into the 
sweating system, and then it was found that 
there were at the West End 676 men, women, 
and children working under sweaters, and occu- 
pying 92 small rooms, the majority of which 
measured eight feet by ten. The sweater, it 
may be as well to state, is the man who con- 
tracts with the large houses to supply them with 
shirts, or clothes, or any other kind of slop work ; 
the more his victims sweat, the more are his gains. 
The sweater is often a Jew, never a Christian. 

Let the reader walk with us to a fashionable 
clothing establishment — a mart, we believe, as 
it is called. The building, as you approach it, 
seems a palace. It is redolent with polished 
mahogany and plate-glass and gilt. You pass 
it when the lamps are lit, and you think of the 
Arabian Nights. It is illuminated as if peace 
had just been proclaimed, or some great national 
desire had been realised. You enter with cash, 



THE SWEATING SYSTEM. 21 

and all is fair and smooth within. Whatever 
you want in the way of apparel is there, and at 
a price for which no honest tradesman can afford 
to sell it. Honest ! asks the reader, is not the 
man honest ? Does he steal the cloth ? Cer- 
tainly not. Does he not pay rent, and taxes, 
and wages ? Most certainly he does. Do not 
his creditors all get twenty shillings in the 
pound ? Most undoubtedly they do ; the law 
protects them, and with • them the man, willing 
or not, must keep himself right. So far as they 
are concerned, honesty is the best policy. How, 
then, does he make his profit ? How is this 
monster establishment maintained ? Out of 
what fund is it that its glitter and glare are 
paid for ? We shall now see. Come down 
this stinking court. Go up those creaking 
stairs. Enter that miserable garret. Look at 
those men, who know nothing of labour but its 
curse, and of life but its misery. Mark the 
haggard faces already stamped with the impress 
of death. If you can bear the polluted atmo- 
sphere, you will hear from these men how they 
toil from early morning far into the night for 
two shillings a day ; how for them the fine air, 
and the golden sunshine, and the rest of the 



22 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Sabbath, exist not ; and it is by them, by their 
sweat and blood and sinew, that the profit is 
made. And now go back and look into the 
gilded shop, and it will seem to you a Grolgotha 
—a place of skulls. Is another illustration 
needed ? Up in yon miserable chamber, with- 
out fire — without food — without furniture — al- 
most without clothes, Martha Duke is stitching 
to earn the few pence by which she prolongs 
life, and its misery. Once, youth was hers, 
with its bright hopes and joys ; but they are 
gone, and with an aching heart and pallid brow 
she plies her daily task. Is it wonderful that, 
wanting coals or something better than dry 
bread, the shirt or the waistcoat should be 
pawned ? Is it not more wonderful that such 
bleak and hopeless poverty should be as honest 
as it is ? And yet from such poor forlorn, for- 
gotten women as these, proceed the profits 
which pay for dazzling window and gorgeous 
pile. Is it strange that the city missionaries 
for last year show an increase of fallen women 
in their districts of 1035 ? 

Bear in mind also that corporal labourers are 
shorter lived and endure more physical evil 
than the mental labourers. The coal-whip- 



DISEASES OF THE POOR. 23 

pers' work — the most wasteful, unscientific, and 
pernicious expenditure of human muscle ever 
devised, writes Dr. Chambers — overstrains the 
fibres of the heart, and the organs become dis- 
eased. Painters again are liable to palsy and 
colic, from the use of white lead. The tailor 
sits till the stomach and bowels become dis- 
ordered, the spine twisted, the gait shambling, 
and the power of taking the exercise necessary 
to health obliterated. Shoemakers and boot- 
makers suffer equally from a constrained posi- 
tion and the pressure of the last against the 
stomach. Heart- burn and indigestion are so 
common among them, that a pill in the Phar- 
macopeia is called the cobbler's pill. The lucifer 
match makers inhale phosphorus to the destruc- 
tion of their lower jaws. The water gilder be- 
comes afflicted with mercurial paralysis. Then 
there is the baker's malady, which carries off a 
large proportion of its victims. Dressmakers 
are peculiarly subject to the attacks of con- 
sumption ; workwomen constantly suffer from 
varicose veins. There are 1700 deaf and dumb 
in London. 

There are two worlds in London, with a gulf 
between — the rich and the poor. We have 



24 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

glanced at the latter; for the sake of contrast 
let us look at the former. Emerson says the 
wealth of London determines prices all over the 
globe. The aggregate receipts of the corpora- 
tion for the year 1859 amounted to £366,228 
19s. Id., and the total expenditure to £287,421 
14s. 6d., leaving a balance in the hands of the 
chamberlain at the beginning of the present 
year of £78,807 4s. 7d., or larger than that of 
the previous year by £22,461. Among the re- 
ceipts, by far the largest item is that of £100,876 
18s. 4d. derived from rents and quit rents. The 
markets have produced £14,119 in round num- 
bers — namely, Leadenhall, £2920 ; Newgate, 
£4452 ; Farringdon, £794 ; Smithfield, £233 ; 
and Billingsgate, £5719. Under the head of 
" Duties," £90,533 odd have been realised^ in- 
cluding the metage on coals, £73,881; the met- 
age on corn, £14,007 ; the groundage of corn, 
£879 ; the metage on fruit, £1651 ; and the 
stamping of weights and measures, £112. The 
business of the Bank of England is conducted 
by about 800 clerks, whose salaries amount to 
about £200,000. The Bank in 1857 had 
£26,683,790 bank notes in circulation. In the 
same year there were about 5 millions deposited 



SUPPLY OF FOOD. 25 

in the Savings' Banks of the metropolis. The 
gross Customs revenue of the port of London in 
1849 was £11,070,176. 65 millions is the esti- 
mate formed by Mr. M'Culloch of the total 
value of the produce conveyed into and from 
London. The gross rental as assessed by the 
property and income tax is 12J millions. The 
gross property insured is £166,000,000, and 
only two-fifths of the houses are insured. The 
amount of capital at the command of the entire 
London bankers may be estimated at 64 mil- 
lions ; the insurance companies have always 40 
millions of deposits ready for investment. 78 
millions are employed in discounts. In 1841 
the transactions of one London house amounted 
to 30 millions. In 1840 the payments made in 
the clearing house were £974,580,600, — an 
enormous sum, which will appear still greater 
when we remember all sums under £100 are 
omitted from this statement. All this business 
cannot be carried on without a considerable 
amount of eating and drinking. The popu- 
lation consumes annually 277,000 bullocks, 
30,000 calves, 1,480,000 sheep, 34,000 pigs, 
1,600,000 quarters of wheat, 310,464,000 
pounds of potatoes, 89,672,000 cabbages. Of 



26 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

fish the returns are 300,000,000 or 400,000,000, 
but we must deduct from this what goes into 
the provinces. Besides, it eats 2,742,000 fowls, 
1,281,000 game. Exclusive of those brought 
from the different parts of the united kingdom, 
from 70 to 75 millions of eggs are annually im- 
ported into London from France and other 
countries. About 20,000 cows are kept in the 
city and its environs for the supply of milk and 
cream ; and if we add to their value that of the 
cheese, and butter, and milk brought from the 
country into the city, the expenditure on dairy 
produce must be enormous. Then London eats 
413,000,000 of half-quartern loaves, consumes 
65,000 pipes of wine, 2,000,000 gallons of 
spirits, 43,200,000 gallons of porter and ale, 
and burns 3,000,000 tons of coal ; and I have 
seen it estimated that one-fourth of the com- 
merce of the nation is carried on in its port. 
Dr. Winter estimates that 35,000 persons are 
engaged in filling the dessert and vegetable 
dishes of the metropolis. Ostend sends 600,000 
rabbits annually. These figures are all under 
the mark, as they make no allowance for the 
adulteration which takes place. Dr. Letheby 
confirms our worst surmises, and shows that in 



ADULTERATION. 27 

spite of Acts of Parliament and officers to see 
that they are properly enforced, articles of food 
and drink are adulterated, and the health of the 
community is seriously affected. Now, this is a 
question that affects us all, rich or poor; but 
the latter, of course, suffer the most. Sickness 
in either class represents suffering and pecuniary 
inconvenience. Life is too precious a boon to be 
trifled with, and for those who shorten it or im- 
pair it merely to make an extra profit, no 
punishment can be too severe. Who can tell, 
for instance, the amount of suffering occasioned 
merely by eating sausages made of condemned 
meat ? In the city of London, this last quarter, 
rather more than seventeen tons of meat, and 
nearly five hundred rabbits, have been seized as 
unfit for human food. "What will our readers 
think when we tell them that of this condemned 
food, even after it has been seized, there is reason 
to believe that a very large portion is made up 
into sausages, and what is equally as bad, the 
butter-like fat obtained in the process of boiling, 
tainted as it is with the fat of horses, is used in 
the manufacture of butter ? We get little pure. 
Dr. Letheby finds water in the milk, rice and 
alum in the bread, turmeric in the mustard, and 



28 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

confesses that our drinkers of genuine beer and 
fine sparkling ales are being poisoned by whole- 
sale. He tells us that the publicans, almost with- 
out exception, reduce their liquors with water after * 
receiving it from the brewer ; the proportion in 
the better class of houses is nine gallons per 
puncheon, and in second-rate establishments the 
quantity of water is doubled. This we believe 
to be the best part of the beverage, but to com- 
pensate for this, ingredients are used to strength- 
en the watered beer. The chief ingredients 
are foots and licorice, to sweeten it ; a bitter 
principle, as gentian and quassia ; sumach and 
terra japonica, to give it astringency; a thicken- 
ing matter, as linseed, to give a body; a colour- 
ing matter, as burnt sugar, to darken it ; coccu- 
lus indicus, to give a false strength ; and com- 
mon salt, capsicum, copperas, and Dantzic 
spruce, to produce a head. In the case of ale 
its apparent strength is restored by means of 
bitters and sugar candy. Now, it is nonsense 
to say men can use this stuff daily with im- 
punity ; sooner or later it must injure health 
and shorten life. It is not wholesome drink, 
whatever the publicans may say to the contrary. 
Ill health, loss of work, and loss of life, must be 



AMUSEMENTS. 29 

the result to even a greater extent than by the 
genuine article. Dr. Letheby enters into an 
ingenious calculation to show that under this 
system the revenue is defrauded to the extent of 
£100,800 per annum. On Boxing Night it 
was estimated that 60,000 persons visited the 
various theatres and places of amusement in 
London. In 1860, 1,531,951 persons visited the 
Crystal Palace. In 1859, 517,895 persons visited 
the British Museum ; 161,764, Hampton Court ; 
344,140 went to Kew Gardens. The total num- 
ber of bathers in the Serpentine were 20,000 
persons. On the last Derby, the South Western 
Company alone conveyed 37,700 passengers. In 
London in 1853, according to Sir P. Mayne, 
there were 3613 beer shops, 5279 public-houses, 
13 wine rooms. The theatres and saloons li- 
censed by the Lord Chamberlain are, the Hay- 
market Theatre, Adelphi, Olympic, Princess's, 
Strand, Surrey, Queen's, Soho, City of London, 
Marylebone, Standard, Pavilion, Victoria, Sad- 
ler's Wells, St. James's, Lyceum, Astley's, Her 
Majesty's, Drury Lane, Grecian Saloon, Albert, 
Britannia, Bower, Earl of Effingham. Literary 
Institutions shut up. The Great Globe itself is 
a doubtful property. That beautiful building, 



30 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LOIS DON. 

the Panopticon in Leicester- square, was a failure, 
and the Adelaide Gallery has long been closed. 
An attempt was made to form an educational 
association in Charing Cross, where, by means 
of a library and cheap lectures, the popular 
mind could be improved and instructed and 
amused, but the attempt did not succeed ; 
dancing, drinking, theatrical representations, — 
most of them adaptations from the French, — 
music, are the only pleasures which a London 
population cared for. Even as in the old He- 
brew days, Wisdom lifts up her voice in our 
streets, and no man regards her testimony. 

And now to guard all this wealth, to relieve 
all this poverty, all this mass of industry honest, 
and to keep down all this crime, what have we? 
5847 police, costing £434,081, 13 police courts, 
costing £67,006, and about a dozen criminal 
prisons ; 69 union relieving officers, 316 officers*' 
of local boards, and 1256 other local officers. We 
have 11 morning and 9 evening newspapers, 
113 weekly, and 65 described as miscellaneous. 
Independently of the mechanics' institutions, 
colleges, and endowed schools, we have 14,000 
children of both sexes clothed and educated gra- 
tis, and the National and British and Foreign 



CHARITIES. 31 

schools in all parts of London, and Sunday 
schools. We have Bartholomew's Hospital, re- 
lieving, in 1859, in-patients 5865, out-patients 
86,489; Guy's Hospital ; St Thomas's, with 4114 
in-patients, out-patients 44,744 ; and many 
more. In the Cancer Hospital last year 2500 pa- 
tients were treated : then there are Bedlam, the 
Foundling Hospital, the Philanthropic Institu- 
tion, the Magdalen. In the report of the Statis- 
tical Society of London it is stated that 14 general 
hospitals in London possess an income from 
realised property to the amount of £109,687 ; 
annual subscriptions, £17,091 ; donations, 
£16,636 ; legacies, £10,206 ; and their miscel- 
laneous sources of income to £1996. The total 
income of all these hospitals from every source 
is £155,616 ; and the annual contributions of 
the public amount to £45,929. In addition to 
the above hospitals there are in this metropolis 
36 special hospitals, possessing an aggregate in- 
come of £117,218 ; making the income of the 
general and special hospitals taken together 
amount to £272,834. There are also returns 
from 42 general dispensaries, possessing in- 
comes from all sources of £21,000 ; and 18 
special dispensaries, with annual incomes of 



32 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

£8064. If these two sums, making £29,064, 
be added to the former, it gives the enormous 
amount of £301,898 annually expended in medi- 
cal charities in this metropolis ; and this sum, 
large as it is, excludes Samaritan and other 
funds connected with hospitals and dispensaries, 
poor-law medical relief (£28,776), cost of main- 
tenance of pauper lunatics (£79,988), vaccina- 
tion (£4292), and nurses' training institutions. 
All these sums would make a grand total of 
nearly half a million expended on our sick poor. 
The City Missionaries now number 339, and 
every missionary visits once a month about 500 
families or 2800 persons. The Ragged School 
"Union has its ramifications in every part of the 
metropolis. Their returns are 128 Sunday 
schools with 16,937 scholars in attendance ; 98 
day ditto, with 13,057 ; 117 evening schools 
with 8085 ; 560 schools and 15 refuges, and 
23,000 children ; and 84 industrial classes with 
3224. London has 12 societies for the reform- 
ation of life and public morals with a total in- 
come of £11,583 ; 18 for reclaiming the fallen, 
and staying the progress of crime, with 
£35,036; 14 for the relief of general destitu- 
tion and distress, with £23,880 ; 12 for the 



CHARITIES. 33 

relief of specified distress, with £29,881; 14 
for aiding the resources of the industrious, with 
£7246 ; 11 for the blind, deaf, and dumb, with 
£34,762 ; 103 colleges, hospitals, and other 
asylums for the aged (exclusive of Chelsea and 
Greenwich Hospitals, £83,047 ;) 16 charitable 
pension societies, with £18,989 ; 74 charitable 
and provident societies, chiefly for specified 
classes, with £103,227 ; 31 asylums for orphans 
and other necessitous children, with £81,015 ; 
10 educational foundations, exclusive of libra- 
ries, modern colleges, or proprietary schools, 
£93,112; 4 charitable ditto, with £13,300; 
40 school societies, religious book, church-aid- 
ing, and Christian instructing, irrespective of 
government grants or establishments, with an 
income, taking the sale of publications, as much 
as £318,189. Mr. Low gives the total number 
of charitable institutions as 500 ; Mr. Mayhew 
puts down their number as 530. Then there 
are 100 temperance meetings held weekly. 
May we not hope that all these institutions 
have some effect, that by means of them some 
are reclaimed,, and many saved ? 

The more direct religious agency may be esti- 
mated as follows. In last year's Post Office 



34 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Directory there is a list of 429 churches and 
423 chapels. At a meeting lately, the Bishop 
of London stated that his diocese is divided into 
433 parishes served by 855 clergymen. The 
number of church sittings, according to Mr. 
Mann, is 409,184 ; the Independents have 
about 140 places of worship and 100,436 sit- 
tings ; the Baptists, 130 chapels, and accommo- 
dation for 54,234 ; the Methodists, 154 chapels, 
60,696; the Presbyterians, 23 chapels and 
18,211 sittings ; the Unitarians, 9 chapels and 
about 3300 sittings ; the Roman Catholics, 35 
chapels and 35,994 sittings ; 4 Quaker chapels, 
with sittings for 3151 ; the Moravians have two 
chapels, with 1100 sittings; the Jews have 11 
synagogues and 3692 sittings. There are 94 
chapels belonging to the New Church, the 
Plymouth Brethren, the Irvingites, the Latter- 
Day Saints, Sandemanians, Lutherans, French 
Protestants, Greeks, Germans, Italians, which 
chapels have sittings for 18,833. We thus get 
691,723 attendants on divine exercises. The 
Bishop of London has consecrated 29 new 
churches, which will accommodate 90,000 per- 
sons, but he still requires room for 141,000 
people. 



PROFLIGACY. 35 

Those who know London life will know that 
I have not glanced at its darkest side : any man 
of the world will tell you infamies which I may 
not name here. I do not go so far as Mr. Pat- 
more, and affirm that in the higher ranks of 
life a young man is obliged to keep a mistress 
to avoid being laughed at ; but I can conceive 
of no city more sunk in licentiousness and ras- 
cality than ours. Paris, Hamburgh, Vienna, 
may be as bad, but they cannot be worse. The 
poor are looked after by the police — visited by 
the city missionary ; their wants and woes are 
worked up into newspaper articles, and they live 
as it were in houses of glass. It is true that 
one half the world does not know how the other 
half lives ; but it is not true in the sense in 
which it is generally affirmed. Who ever has 
an idea that a pious baronet, taking the chair 
at a religious meeting in Exeter Hall, will prove 
a felon ; that that house, eminent in the mercan- 
tile and philanthropic world, will sanction the 
circulation of forged Dock warrants ; that that 
manager, about to engage in prayer at a meeting 
of directors, will turn out to be the manager of 
the greatest swindle of modern times ? Who sees 
a dishonoured suicide in the patriotic Sadleir, 
d2 



36 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

or in the philanthropic Redpath a convict for 
life, or in the dashing Robson a maniac ? If I 
tell you that respectable old gentleman now 
coming out of his club is going to inspect a fresh 
victim, whom some procuress has lured with 
devilish art, you will tell me that I am uncharit- 
able; or if I point you to that well-appointed 
equipage in the Park, and tell you that that fair 
young girl that sits within has crushed many a 
young wife's heart, and has sent many a man to 
the devil before his time, you will tell me I ex- 
aggerate : I do nothing of the kind. If I were 
to tell what most men know — what every one 
knows, except those whose business it is to know 
it, and to seek to reform it — I should be charged 
with indelicacy, as if truth could be indelicate, 
and my book perhaps suppressed by the Society 
for the Suppression of Vice — if that abortion ex- 
ists still. We are choked up with cant ; almost 
everything we believe in is a lie. The prayer 
of Ajax should be ours, — Light — more light. 

What are we to do? — to stand stock still, 
looking to heaven " with a frenzied air, as if to 
ask if a God were there ?" One can almost be- 
lieve, with George Gilfillan, that the earth needs 
a new gospel and a new manifestation of divine 






WHO IS TO SAVE US ? 37 

power. From this low estate who is to rescue 
us ? Not the aristocracy, a barbarous institu- 
tion, perpetrating barbarous ideas in our midst, 
— that work is not honourable ; whereas all 
true civilization points us to the fact, that man 
is only happy and virtuous as he is steadily 
industrious ; and thus our most uncivilized 
classes are our upper and lower, — our lords 
and ladies on one side, and our rogues and 
prostitutes on the other. Not our law-makers, 
who imprison our young lads in costly jails, 
where the criminals have luxuries denied to the 
poor ; and then in Newgate, or at the public 
works, mix them all up together, that the com- 
paratively innocent may learn to be adepts in 
crime. Not our religious, I fear, when, from 
the Archbishop of Canterbury down to Dr. Cum- 
ming, the cry is, If you have a proper trans- 
lation of the Bible you will destroy the faith of 
the people. Not our trading classes, becoming 
richer and more sunk in flunkeyism every day. 
But it may be that these — 

" Are graves from which, a glorious phantom may 
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day." 

Whom am I to blame ? Not the victims, but 
the fathers, and mothers, and divines, and 



38 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

schoolmasters, and governing classes. Father, 
you have given your bold, manly son an emas- 
culated religion, — a religion that wilfully shuts 
its eyes, and will not look upon life as it is ; and, 
immediately he goes into the world, away van- 
ish all the pasteboard defences with which you 
childishly sought to guard him ; and yet you will 
not confess that in inculcating religious creeds, 
— -that in teaching children catechisms, — that in 
vaguely telling them to be good, — that in lead- 
ing them to believe in forms rather than truths, 
you are only damming up for a while the pas- 
sionate impulses of young blood, that they may 
ultimately exert a more tumultuous and irresist- 
ible sway. You take the little Arab of the 
streets, and, for acts of levity and wantonness 
which all boys commit, you send him to prison, 
at an age when you confess he is not a responsi- 
ble creature, and then idiotically wonder that 
he turns out a criminal, and that he wars with 
society till he is hanged. You are surprised that 
woman, fond of praise, of dress, and pleasure, 
should prefer to walk the streets in silk and 
satin, to have a short life and a merry one, 
rather than slave and drudge, and end her days 
after all in a workhouse. You tone down your 



OUIi CIVILIZATION. 39 

fashionably educated daughters into automatons, 
and then wonder that hot youth finds domestic 
life tame and dull. Above all, do not go away 
with the idea that we have reached the utmost 
height of civilization, — that we are a model peo- 
ple, — that it is our mission to set up as teachers 
of religion to all mankind. Let us remember 
that the increase of crime and dissipation are 
facts ; that there can be no corrupter city than 
London, and that it must be so, so long as we 
make professions our practice so scandalously 
denies. I have heard Her Majesty's proclama- 
tion against vice and immorality read at quarter- 
sessions by men in whose reading it became a 
farce which the most ignorant bumpkin in court 
could relish. Now we are going to do wonders, 
the policeman is to supplement the parson, the 
wicked are to be hunted down. Is this the way 
seriously to set about moral reform ? Eoutine 
and officialism in church and state have made 
the outside of the sepulchre white enough ; do 
we not need a little cleansing within ? How 
long will men look for grapes from thorns ? 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 

My readers may be aware that last winter and 
this many what are called Midnight Meetings 
have been held. I have just come from one. 
All the world knows that some earnest men 
have set themselves to work to reclaim women 
who have fallen into sin and shame. Men are 
bad from many ways — from want, from will, 
from ignorance, from recklessness — some from 
the mere love of change, and others from tempt- 
ation coming at once and almost impossible to 
resist. Women similarly are bad. Some of 
these causes we can remove, and in so doing 
save the woman who has sinned against her 
own soul and the welfare of society at large. 
To tell the poor thing who prostitutes herself 
for a bit of bread that you can give her that 
and a home besides is a sure way of reclaiming 
her. The devil holds out his baits, why should 
not you hold yours ? Some poor women never 
had a chance of doing right. They were born 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 41 

in shame, and have led lives of shame. Why 
not give such a chance of becoming decent and 
respectable ? 

I write not here of midnight in the Hay- 
market. From casinos, and supper-rooms, 
and music-halls, and theatres, and coffee-houses, 
and streets of doubtful reputation — from far and 
near have assembled a crowd the like of which 
for license, and disorder, and shameless impu- 
dence you can find nowhere else in Europe. 
Gin-shops, and divans, and oyster-rooms pour 
forth a flood of light on the ever-shifting scene. 
In this laughing, drinking, chaffing, quarrelling 
crowd you see now and then an elderly gentle- 
man of almost clerical appearance distributing 
what appear to be letters done up in envelopes. 
You observe he only presents them to the female 
portion of this Yanity Fair mob. Strange is the 
effect of this apparently harmless epistle. Some 
girls tear it up, some laugh, some accept it 
thankfully, some refuse it with scorn. See, a 
gentleman has persuaded a couple of girls to ac- 
company him. We follow him, and find our- 
selves in the interior of one of the most fashion- 
able of London restaurants. There are not 
many people here yet. On the numerous tables 



42 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

around are tea-cups and plates, and cake and 
bread and butter. Waiters are present with 
huge pots of coffee. A few girls are seated at 
different tables, and, while they are partaking 
of refreshment, are chatting with a few ladies 
and gentlemen connected with the movement. 
We can guess what they are talking about, and 
this I take to be the hardest part of the night's 
work. It requires an uncommon amount of 
delicacy and tact. Let us hope those present 
have the requisite delicacy and tact. It is not 
enough to mean well. If good meaning could 
save the world, society would have been re- 
generated long ere this. One or two clergy- 
men are present, but they sit quiet and apart. 
One of them will presently deliver an address. 
He, it may be, is now thinking it over. I can- 
not believe, however, it would be less appropriate 
if he would just walk about the room and enter 
into conversation with some of the guests. Let 
me name him with honour. He was a chaplain 
to the Queen, and he is of aristocratic descent. 
His father was an English peer, and he himself 
was one of the leaders of the evangelical clergy 
in the Church of England. Yet he gave up his 
status and became a hardworking Baptist min- 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 43 

ister in a chapel not far from the Foundling 
Hospital, simply because conscience dictated 
such a step. Well may he ask the young wo- 
men around him to fly the allurements of the 
world — if such there be to them — (not many of 
them seem to have been very successful in their 
calling) — and return to duty and to God. Let 
us suppose an hour has past away ; the room 
has become very full ; a great deal of eating 
and drinking and talking is going on. A 
change, too, has come over the assembly. The 
girls look more at home and more interested, 
very different to the appearance they presented 
in the Haymarket an hour ago. Some are evi- 
dently very weary, and wish themselves away, 
but the majority receive the invitation in the 
spirit in which it was given. A few look saucy 
and flippant, and one or two are evidently the 
worse for drink. We have here all ages and 
conditions — some evidently very battered and 
beaten and worn, and some but have just com- 
menced what in bitter irony may be termed 
their gay career. Oh ! some of them still think 
of home, still remember a father's care, and still 
feel on them the soft pressure of a mother's love. 
Look on that young one weeping; surely she 



44 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LOXDOX. 

cannot long have trodden the Haymarket stones ; 
surely she cannot long have bid good-bye to 
home. Surely, on this winter night, a mother 
yet may be listening at the cottage door, and 
saying to herself, " My Rose, the child of my 
old age, will she not come back to me now?" 
Mother, rejoice, the good Samaritan has picked 
up your poor girl, and is already on his way 
with her. They do say the devil, when he plays 
with man or woman for his soul, is sure to cheat 
them. Poor deluded ones around me, in faded 
finery, and with cheeks red with rouge, has he 
not cheated you ? You were allured by money 
and gay attire — you have not either. Love 
tempted you, and you fell, and have lost that. 
Indolence tempted you, and you fell ; an 
Egyptian bondage is preferable to yours. Or 
ambition tempted you, and you fell — fell so that 
the merest peasant maid is a lady, and leads a 
royal life, compared with you. I am aware 
much is to be said on your behalf, — that many 
who scorn you would be no better had they to 
live as you did. When one sees how female 
labour is remunerated, one wonders not that so 
many girls go astray, but that so many are 
honest. Look at the great employers of labour 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 45 

in London — ask them what they pay their 
female hands. Gro to the best-known of such — 
the men who are the ornaments of religious 
societies, whose names figure in lists of dona- 
tions and subscriptions to charitable objects for 
large sums, who keep holy the sabbath, and 
outwardly avoid the appearance of evil, and you 
will find that they give to the women in their 
employ, wages on which they cannot decently 
live. They are right I know according to the 
modern gospel — they do as all do now-a-days, 
buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest 
market. But have they or any masters a right 
to take the whole time of any man or woman 
for a remuneration that will scarcely secure 
bread ? Depend upon it, " the social evil," as it 
is called, is, as regards most women, a mere 
question of wages, and will cease when female 
labour is better paid. But time passes on. A 
gentleman gives out a hymn ; they all rise and 
sing, 

" Sinner, why so thoughtless grown, 
Why in such dreadful haste to die, 
Daring to leap to worlds unknown, 
Heedless against thy God to fly ?" 

A few more verses are sung ; a woman near me 



46 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

says she wishes for flash songs ; but she has 
been drinking before she came in, and is evi- 
dently here for what she terms a lark. The 
singing over, the clergyman I have already 
alluded to — the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel — 
delivers a short address. It is very solemn, al- 
most too much so. There is no beating about 
the bush. We are all lost and perishing, he 
tells us, but some have been saved by grace. 
Those who are lost, if they died, must be damn- 
ed ; and the question then is, whether those 
present were prepared for that alternative ? I 
look round, and some women are asleep, and 
many are inattentive. In a few minutes Mr. 
Noel ceases to be theological, and touches on 
subjects of human interest. He speaks less of 
abstractions, and more of living flesh and blood. 
He deals in personal narrative. He tells anec- 
dotes of such as they whose hearts had been sud- 
denly touched and whose lives suddenly amended 
by listening to the gospel offer of salvation. 
None sleep, and very few are inattentive now. 
When he last addressed them, said the reverend 
gentleman, there was a woman in that room 
who had accepted the rescue offered her and be- 
come a Christian woman, and he loved her as 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 47 

such. Mr. Radcliffe had been lecturing to such 
as they at Edinburgh, and wonderful conversions 
had been made. Mr. Weaver, now preaching 
at the Surrey Theatre, had been in a similar 
manner successful. They had told Mr. Noel 
anecdotes, which he repeated. Such was the 
address, lasting about half an hour, delivered in 
a simple and earnest and affectionate manner. 
At the conclusion prayer was offered up, another 
hymn was sung, and an intimation was then 
made that those who liked to go were at liberty 
to do so, and that if any liked to remain they 
would receive a kindly welcome, and be pro- 
vided with a home. A home ! what a magic 
there is in the term ! It has charms for some 
there. Back to the world of riot without — to 
laugh, and drink, and die — the most go ; but 
some stop to be garnered up, and cared for, and 
saved, sinners though they be. Sinners, I say, 
but not sinners at whom we may cast stones, 
not sinners to be held up to reproach whilst we 
reverence and do honour to far bigger sinners 
every day. The sweetest page in all the Gospel 
story is that which tells of Mary Magdalene, 
which tells how 



48 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

" She sat and wept, and with her untress'd hair 
Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch ; 
And He wiped off the soiling of despair 
From her sweet soiil because she loved so much." 

And the Marys in that room had heard of her, 
and were evidently trusting to do the same. 

From these meetings the women are drafted off 
to homes ; the Society for the rescue of Young 
Women and Children has twelve such. " These 
homes are on the family principle, from fifteen 
to twenty only being associated together. These 
* Family Homes ' are placed under the care of 
pious married women or widows. There is no- 
thing to distinguish any of the houses belonging 
to the Society from private residences. There 
is not a strict uniformity of dress, nor are the 
inmates confined by bolts or bars. The hair is 
not cut off. The diet is on a liberal scale. Those 
who have strayed from the path of virtue are 
not associated with other girls. A proper classi- 
fication of the young women is one of the So- 
ciety's most important principles ; and one great 
object of having the homes situated in widely 
different parts of London is that girls associated 
with bad companions may be removed to an 
opposite part of London from that in which they 
live. The inmates are allowed to see their friends 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 49 

on the first Monday in every two months, and to 
write once a month, or oftener if necessary. They 
are instructed in every useful household work, 
together with knitting, sewing, laundry work, 
&c. At several of the homes the girls bake their 
own bread. The younger part of the family are 
chiefly occupied in learning to read, write, and 
do simple arithmetic. The inmates attend public 
worship on the Lord's day. Family worship is 
strictly observed, morning and evening, and the 
inmates are constantly urged to seek a change 
of heart as essential to their salvation. Corporal 
punishment is never inflicted ; the arrangements 
are such that the greatest punishment is separa- 
tion from their companions and the incurring of 
the matron's displeasure ; thus love, as distin- 
guished from compulsion and coercion, is the 
basis of the society's plans. Spirits, wine, and 
beer are not allowed to any of the inmates, ex- 
cept by medical authority." 

Seventy females have been received into these 
homes since the commencement of holding mid- 
night meetings ; the total number of persons 
received is 706. Of these, 422 had fallen from 
the path of virtue. Their occupations had been 
as follows : — 320 had been domestic servants ; 



50 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

47 had been living at home, being too young for 
service ; 7 had been needlewomen ; 5 had been 
dressmakers or milliners; 2 had been shop women; 
1 had been a teacher ; 5 had been factory girls ; 
1 had been a book-keeper ; 1 had been a nursery 
governess ; 1 had been a barmaid ; 1 had been a 
book-binder ; 2 had been laundresses ; 3 had 
been at field-work ; 26 none, or not known. Of 
this number, 217 had either lost both parents, 
or were fatherless or motherless. Out of 409 
cases we find that 307 were not over twenty 
years of age when they were led astray. And 
it is a very painful fact — and one which we find 
it very difficult to realise — that five out of every 
six have been Sunday scholars. Of course drink 
plays a part in this female ruin. For instance, 

we read : — "E S , aged 17, of London, 

nurtured by a profligate father and a drunken 
mother" The writer of the report very naturally 
asks — Who can wonder, then, that at the age 
of fifteen this young creature fell ? The part 
that drink plays in this dance of death we 
imagine is more of a conservative character. 
Drink keeps fallen women where they are. It 
may not have been the direct means of their 
fall, but it certainly forbids them ever to rise. 



I 



A MIDNIGHT MEETING. 51 

It helps them down, and chains them down till 
they are lost. To reclaim them, the Temper- 
ance principle is adopted. The homes, as our 
readers have already learned, are conducted on 
total abstinence principles. But the most fright- 
ful fact, and one which, however, we have long 
suspected, is, in many families, the character of 
domestic servitude. Mistresses often complain 
that they cannot get good servants. It is clear 
servants do not often get good mistresses, or it 
would be utterly impossible that out of four 
hundred and twenty-two fallen females three 
hundred and twenty had been domestic servants. 
This is a social evil on an extended scale. In 
such homes as these the mistresses must have 
failed in their duty. We hope and believe such 
homes are the exception, but still they are far 
too common. There must have been more or 
less of neglect. The mistress of a servant is 
bound to see that her servants are made com- 
fortable — that they are protected. If they fall 
when in her service, we fear too often part of the 
disgrace and shame must attach to herself. A 
word from her kindly spoken might often save 
a giddy girl when on the verge of ruin. This 
brings us to the question of remedies. Little 
E 2 



52 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

remedies are all very well in their way, but we 
want to check a great evil, and something more. 
What we require is that men and women would 
wake up to a sense of life's duties and respon- 
sibilities. If mistresses were humane, thought- 
ful, Christian, there would be fewer servants on 
the streets. Of course we are now looking at the 
social evil merely from a limited point of view, 
we are merely taking the experience of one 
society — a society that evidently comes into con- 
tact with it in its lowest forms. Yet even here 
we learn something of its extent, as we find one 
of the rescued girls was the daughter of a 
woman the mistress of a clergyman. But it is 
clear the social evils that infest the public pro- 
menades, who wear the most expensive dresses, 
live in the most splendidly furnished houses, 
ride in the daintiest of broughams, whose society 
is courted by men of wealth and rank, are not 
to be reached by such organisation as that whose 
report we have just referred to. The time may 
come when society may cast them out, and they 
too may be glad of space for repentance. 



SEEING A MAN HANGED. 

I am not about to give an opinion as to the 
propriety or impropriety of capital punishments. 
On this point good men have differed, and will 
differ, I dare say, for some time to come. What 
I wish to impress upon the philanthropic or 
Christian reader is the horrible nature and atro- 
cious effect of a public execution. 

A few Sunday evenings since I was passing 
by Newgate, along the outside of which a 
considerable crowd had been collected. Respect- 
able mechanics, with their wives and children, 
were staring at its dreary stone walls. Ragged 
boys and girls were romping and laughing in 
the streets. All the neighbouring public-houses 
were filled with a tipsy crowd. Here and there 
a few barriers had been erected, and workmen 
were engaged in putting up more. Why were 
these preparations made ? For what purpose had 
this crowd collected ? A man was to be hung, 
was the reply. I resolved for once to see the 



54 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

tragedy performed. To me or the living mass 
around, that man was an utter stranger. I had 
never seen him or heard the sound of his voice ; 
all I knew was that he had led an outlaw's life, 
and was to die as outlaws ofttimes do. How 
strange the mysterious interest with which death 
clothes everything it touches ! Is it that looking 
at a man so soon to have done with life we fancy 
we can better pry into the great secret ? Do 
we deem that seeing him struggle we shall die 
more manfully ourselves, or is it merely the 
vague interest with which we regard any one 
about to travel into distant regions, all unknown 
to him or us, and the secrets of which he can 
never return to tell ? Be this as it may, I went 
back at twelve. The public-houses had been 
closed, decent people had gone home to bed ; but 
already the crowd had become denser, already 
had the thief and the bully from all the slums 
and stews of the metropolis been colkcted to- 
gether. You can easily recognise the criminal 
population of our capital. The policeman knows 
them instinctively, as with their small wiry 
figures, restless eyes, and pale faces, they pass 
him by. One can tell them as easily as one 
knows the child of Norman origin by his noble 



SEEING A MAN HANGED. 55 

bearing, or the Anglo-Saxon by his blue eyes 
and rosy cheeks. There is generally something 
fine, and genial, and hearty about an English 
mob. On the night of the peace-rejoicing you 
might have taken a lady from one end of London 
to the other, and she would not have heard an 
objectionable word, or been inconvenienced in 
the least ; but the mob of which I now write 
seemed utterly repulsive and reprobate ; all its 
sympathies seemed perverted. It is a hard 
world this, I know, and it has but little mercy 
for the erring and the unfortunate ; but that 
they should regard it with such evil eyes, that 
they should be so completely estranged from all 
its recognised modes of thought and action, that 
it should seem to them such a complete curse, 
was what I was not prepared to expect. It 
really made one's blood run cold to hear the mob 
around me talk. The man to be hung had 
rushed into a jeweller's shop as it was being 
closed, beaten the shopman, who tried to defend 
his master's property, with a life-preserver, and 
then left him for dead. But he had not said one 
word about his accomplices, and the crowd evi- 
dently admired him rather than not. " The 
ticket-of-leave man was out on starvation," as 



56 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

one of them informed me. " The Government," 
I drop the expressive adjective by which the 
noun was prefixed, " dodges him, and if he steals 
it is only what he must do, and if murder follows 
it is not his fault, and Government is unjust 
in hanging him for it." Such was the popular 
notion of the subject in my immediate neigh- 
bourhood. Government seemed to have planned 
the opportunity for the holders of such opinions 
to ventilate them. Till eight o'clock these men 
were to be formed into one compact mass ; and 
how were they to pass their time if they did not 
talk? and here who was there to lift up his 
voice on behalf of law and order ? and if there 
were such, who would have listened ? Realise 
the state of the case. Look around ! Where do 
you see the clear front and unabashed presence 
of honesty and virtue ? The virtuous and the 
honest have long been in bed. Here there is a 
fight. That bundle of rags, with matted hair 
covering all the face so that you cannot clearly 
see a feature, is the Clare Market Pet, and she 
has just encountered Slashing Sal, between whom 
and herself there has been mortal enmity for 
years. Both women — yes, they are women, nor 
so fallen are they but that the temperance 



SEEING A MAX HANGED. 57 

agent or the city missionary may yet lead them 
to a diviner life, and He may smile on them who 
never yet turned away repentant son or daughter 
of sin and shame — are very tipsy, very dirty, 
and very red. Shrieking and cursing, the Clare 
Market Pet rushes on Slashing Sal, who is by 
no means loth for the encounter. A ring is 
formed, men and boys halloo and encourage, and 
the battle rages furiously, though both women 
are far too drunk to do each other any serious 
harm. At length the Clare Market Pet is van- 
quished and order is restored, just as we are told 
tranquillity reigns at Naples. " Please give me 
a penny," says a girl of about fourteen, and I 
find myself in the midst of a group of youthful 
costermongers and their wives, who have come 
here for a lark, just as they frequent the penny 
gaff, or crowd the gallery in the Victoria. I 
listen to their slang till I feel sick, as I think 
for what a future of crime and its result they 
are now rapidly ripening. In this Christian 
land can no agency be formed that shall save 
these young heathens ? Again, I find a female 
standing by my side ; she is horridly dirty ; she 
stinks of gin ; her face is that of the confirmed 
sot — of one who has given up home and hus- 



58 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

band, and comfort, and decency, for the accursed 
drink. She looks very piteously in my face. 
" And so they are going to hang the poor man," 
she exclaims ; " they have no mercy on him." 
" You forget," I reply, " the poor man whom he 
murdered, and on whom he had no mercy." 
" JNo, I do n't," she exclaims with tipsy gravity ; 
" he had no right to kill the man, and ought to 
be'punished ; but ain't we all morally bad ?" — 
but here the conversation ends, for she has sunk 
down, maudlin, stinking with gin, and overcome 
by it and weariness, on the doorstep. Ah, these 
doorsteps, let us look at them. To-night the 
police do n't bid the habitues move on. What 
crowds are collected on them, — ragged boys, who, 
perhaps, have nowhere else to sleep, wild-look- 
ing women unbonnetted and shoeless, with red, 
uncombed hair, faces very much marked with 
the small pox, only seen on such occasions as 
these — old men crouch on them for whom home 
has no charm, and life no lustre, and girls whose 
rouged cheeks and shabby finery tell to what 
wretchedness and degradation, though young in 
years, they have already come. Let them sleep 
on, if they can, on their stony mattress, beneath 
this inclement sky, out in this cold December 



SEEING A MAN HANGED. 59 

night ; they are happier now than they can be 
in their waking hours ! But look at the windows, 
all lighted up and filled with gay company. 
Those two beautiful girls — let us hope they are 
not ladies — not English mothers or wives — who 
have just stepped out of the brougham, and are 
now gazing from a first-floor on the wild human 
sea beneath, will sit playing cards and drinking 
champagne all night ; yet scarce have the sounds 
of Sabbath bells died away, and in a few hours a 
man is to be hung, and these girls, all sensibility 
and tears, will sit with their opera glasses during 
the fearful agony, as if merely Grisi acted or 
Mario sang. 

Let us take another stroll through this living 
mass. The workmen have put up the last bar- 
riers — the clock strikes three — a crowd, dense 
and eager, has planted itself by the Old Bailey 
The yard is thrown open, and three strong 
horses, such as you see in brewers' drays, drag 
along what seems to be an immense clumsy black 
box. It stops at the door of Newgate nearest to 
St Sepulchre's. Women shriek as it rumbles 
over the stones, and you shudder, for instinct- 
ively you guess it is the gallows. By the dim 
gas-light you see workmen first fix securely a 



60 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

stout timber — then another — and then a beam 
across from which hangs a chain — and now the 
crowd becomes denser. Let us leave it and en- 
ter the house, at the top of which we have pre- 
viously engaged a seat. 

We are some eight or nine in a very small 
roonij and most of us are amateurs in hanging, 
and it seems to us a very pleasant show. Some 
of us have come a long way, and most of us have 
been up all night. We have seen every execu- 
tion for the last ten years, and boast how on one 
day we saw one man hung at Newgate, and took 
a cab and got to Horsemonger-lane in time to 
see another. A rare feat that, and one of which 
we are justly proud. We talk of these things, 
and how we have seen criminals die, till some of 
us get very angry, and flatly contradict each 
other. Altogether there is somewhat too much 
mirth in the house, though we could not have 
had a better place had we paid £5 for it. The 
women are too exuberant and full of fun. It is 
true, as the girls say to each other, " they do n't 
hang a man every day," but the gaiety is dis- 
cordant. Over the way he is just waking up 
from his troubled sleep. A thin waif of smoke 
goes up from the dark dreary building opposite 



SEEING A MAN HANGED. 61 

— are they boiling him his last cup of tea ? 
See, there is a light in the press-room ! Ah, 
what are they doing there? St Sepulchre's 
strikes six. The door at the foot of the scaffold 
opens, and very stealthily, and so as to be seen 
by none but such as are high up like ourselves, 
a man throws sawdust on the scaffold, and dis- 
appears again ; we see him this time with a 
chain or rope. All this while the hydra-headed 
mob beneath amuses itself in various ways. It 
sings songs, chiefly preferring those with a 
chorus — it hoots dogs — it tosses small boys about 
on its top. As we look from the window, we 
think we never saw such a mob before. Far as 
the eye can 'reach towards Ludgate-hill on one 
side, and Giltspur-street on the other, it is one 
mass of human heads ; the very air is tainted 
with their odour — we smell it where we are. Our 
amateur friends are in excellent spirits ; they 
have not seen so many people at an execution 
for some years. They are agreeably surprised ; 
they all thought the man would not have been 
hung, and had backed their opinions by bets. 

A long wearisome night was it, even to us — 
and it is not yet eight. The roar of the crowd 
is so great — can he hear it within ? — that we 



62 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

cannot catch the sound of the neighbouring 
chimes ; but we see signs that the end is ap- 
proaching. The police have filled up the inter- 
vening space between the scaffold and the crowd. 
A bell tinkles dismally, horridly. We look be- 
yond the scaffold down into the open doorway, 
and there they are, ascending the stairs. First 
the chaplain, then the criminal, and then Jack 
Ketch. Marley walks steadily, with pale face 
and eyes cast down, and places himself imme- 
diately under the rope. He trembles slightly 
as his legs are being fastened, his hands had 
already been pinioned behind. A nightcap is 
drawn over his face, the rope is adjusted round 
his neck, Jack Ketch hastens down the ladder, 
the chaplain, reading the burial service all the 
while, steps back, down goes the drop, a woman 
or two shrieks, there is a slight convulsive move- 
ment of the body, and what was a minute back a 
living man is now a dishonoured corpse. There 
he dangles in the cold north wind for an hour. 
We cannot get away, as the crowd is determined 
to see the last of it, and will not move. It stops 
to hoot Jack Ketch, as he comes to cut Marley 
down at nine o'clock. Till then, there he hangs, 
a tall, well-made man, with fine dark whiskers, 



SEEING A MAX HANGED. 63 

in his very prime, heedless of the sixty thousand 
glaring eyes all round, with hands clasped as if 
supplicating that divine mercy which all born of 
woman need, and which may God grant us in 
our dying hour. Away hastes the crowd to its 
business or its pleasure ; and when a short time 
after I pass by the very spot where that hideous 
throng had stood, blaspheming in the very pre- 
sence of death, butchers' and carriers' carts filled 
up the vacant space, and the past night seemed 
a ghastly dream. 



CATHERINE-STREET, 

Strand, is a busy place by day-time (it does a 
great business in the newspaper line, and about 
four or five in the afternoon it is used by the 
acute newsboys of the metropolis as a kind of 
Change), but it is busier far by night, and the 
later the hour the more active and lively it 
grows. As you walk along the Strand any time 
in the afternoon and evening, have you not seen 
(to our shame be it said) a sight not visible in 
the chief thoroughfare of any other capital in 
Europe ? The sight I allude to is that of girls, 
whose profession is but too evident from their 
appearance, stopping almost every man they 
meet, mildly, perhaps, in the early part of the 
evening — but, under the influence of drink, with 
greater rudeness and freedom as the night wears 
on. These girls, as you observe, are dressed in 
finery hired for the purpose ; and following them, 
as a hawk its prey, you will perceive at a re- 
spectful distance old hags, always Jewesses, 



CATHERINE-STREET. 65 

whose business it is to see that these girls do not 
escape with their fine dresses, and that they are 
active in their efforts to entrap young men void 
of understanding. Well, these women all live 
in the neighbourhood of Catherine-street. What 
a filthy trade the Jews and Jewesses of London 
drive ! You may go into Elysiums, and wine- 
rooms, and saloons, in this district, and you will 
find them belonging to Jews — the waiters Jews 
— the wine, the women, the cigars, all in the 
hands of Jews — true to their ancient vocation of 
" spoiling the Egyptians." Let me not be un- 
derstood as joining in vulgar prejudices against 
the Jews. Without reading " Coningsby," or 
"Lord George Bentinck, a Political Biography," 
I am ready to confess that there have been, and 
still are, great and gifted men born to the Jew- 
ish race ; but I am speaking of the vile crew 
who earn an infamous livelihood by pandering 
to all that is degraded in man or woman — whose 
vulture eyes follow you up and down Catherine- 
street, and who, if they could, would rob you of 
your last farthing, and tear off from your back 
its last rag, and who by fair means or foul rear 
up prostitutes, and trade in flesh and blood. 
But pardon the digression, and yet not exactly 



66 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

is the subject a digression, when we remember 
Catherine-street and its neighbouring courts 
would be a very different locality, had not the 
Jews selected it as a fitting place for operation. 
In the days of Consule Planco, as Mr Thackeray 
would write, in the hot youth of the Regency, 
before George IV. had become prematurely used 
up, and a moral people had erected a statue to 
the memory of the most dissolute king in Christ- 
endom as a lesson for England's ingenuous youth 
and as an example for future royal princes, 
Catherine-street was gay indeed, if wine and 
profligacy in the lowest and worst reality of 
forms are ever gay. There was Mother H.'s, 
where bucks assembled^ and reckless women 
danced and drank for a few short years ere they 
died wretchedly in parish poor-houses, or sought 
oblivion and repose in the dark waters of the 
neighbouring Thames, Up and down Catherine- 
street what wretchedness masked in smiles has 
walked — what sin in satin — what devilish craft 
and brutal lust, ay, and, what is worse than 
all, what unavailing repentance and regret ! 

A very fleeting population is that of Catherine- 
street. These women, commencing their life at 
eighteen, are few of them supposed to last more 



CATHERINE-STREET. 67 

than eight years ; and if you see them in the 
day-time, before they are painted and dressed 
up — with their red eyes and bloated faces, you 
will think few of them will last even that short 
time ; but they pass on one by one to the spirit 
land, not as did Antigone, conscious of duty 
done, though wailing her unwedded state, nor as 
Jephthah's high-souled daughter, for whom He- 
brew maidens devoutly wept — but with body and 
soul alike loathsome and steeped in sin. Here 
in Catherine-street vice is a monster of a hide- 
ous mien. The gay women, as they are termed, 
are worse off than American slaves, and the men 
at the best are but drunken fools frittering away 
time and money and health, and rooting out 
from their hearts all trace of the divine that may 
be yet lingering there. The West is the more 
fashionable quarter, and the glory of Catherine- 
street is fled. Almost every house you come to 
is a public-house, or something worse. Here 
there is a free-and-easy after the theatres are 
over ; there a lounge open all night for the en- 
tertainment of bullies and prostitutes, and pick- 
pockets and thieves, greenhorns from the coun- 
try or London-born; here a dancing saloon, 
which we are told in the advertisement no visitor 

F 2 



68 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

should leave London without first seeing, and 
there a coffee-house where, when expelled from 
gayer places of resort, half- intoxicated men and 
women take an early breakfast. All round you 
are bitter memories. Every stone you tread is 
red with blood; you can almost hear the last 
dying shriek of virtue, before, by means of the 
tempting purse or the hocussed draught, the poor 
victim — feebler in her struggles every hour — be 
lost for ever. Yet the gas burns brightly by 
night, and there is dancing, and wine, and songs, 
and in the small hours you may hear a hollow 
laughter, sadder even than cries and tears. 
Think what years and years of tedious culture 
must have elapsed to produce this concentrated 
essence of vice. How many must have died in 
the seasoning — how many must have turned back 
shuddering as they saw the dark ending to their 
infatuated career — how many weeping parents 
must have won back to decency and the observ- 
ance of moral and social law — how many the 
want of pecuniary means must have compelled 
into a reluctant abstinence ! Such a crop could 
only be reared in such a Sodom and Gomorrha 
as ours. That landlord, gloating over his ill- 
gotten gains, could not have sunk into so fallen 



CATHERINE-STREET. 69 

a condition rapidly. It has taken years to make 
him what he is. There is no excuse for him? 
and he knows it. It is not for the honest re- 
freshment of the weary or the bona fide accom- 
modation of the public that his house is open. 
The real public have been in bed for hours. 
These men around us are here for immoral pur- 
poses. These women are on the same bad errand, 
and that they may better pursue their vocation, 
here they come and drink ; but he sells his 
poison, thinking not of the mischief it will do, 
but of the gain it will bring. Is he not a de- 
graded man, with his double chin, and dirty 
face, and low forehead ? can you see in him one 
trace of benevolence or humanity ? Do you doubt 
this ? — spend your last farthing in his bar, pawn 
every article of clothing you have, and go with 
an empty pocket and in rags, and you will soon 
be ordered to the door. You see he is now turn- 
ing out that wretched creature. He has allowed 
her to drink till she has no more money ; but 
she solicited chance customers, and they treated 
her to gin, and so the landlord let her stop; but 
now she is so drunk as to interfere with his 
business, and he turns her houseless and friend- 
less out into the streets. Let us watch her. She 



70 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

is too far gone to have any decency left. Drink 
and sadness combined have tortured her brain 
to madness. Her curses fill the air; a crowd 
collects ; the police come up ; she is borne on a 
stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is 
dismissed with a reprimand, or sentenced to a 
month's imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate 
is in a good temper or the reverse. The longer 
we stop here the more of such scenes shall we 
see, for with such publicans and sinners Cathe- 
rine-street abounds. I have known life lost 
here in these midnight brawls; yet by day it 
has a dull and decent appearance, and little 
would the passing stranger guess all its reve- 
lations of sorrow and of crime. 



THE BAL MASQUE, 

In foreign lands, we are told, is something re- 
fined and delicate. I have been to some abroad 
which certainly were nothing of the kind ; but 
in England, or rather in London, they are low, 
blackguard places, whether in the Holborn Ca- 
sino, or Covent Grarden, or the Grecian Saloon, 
or Vauxhall, or at Drury-lane. In 1723 they 
were put down by government. Steele wrote of 
them, that in his time, " the misfortune of the 
thing is, that people dress themselves in what 
they have a mind to be — and not what they are 
fit for." I have seen the French men and women 
at Vauxhall, and if they do in Paris what they 
do there — why, then I doubt somewhat of the 
superiority even of French Bal Masques. But 
in England a public Bal Masque is a disgusting 
exhibition, to enjoy which every moral sense 
must be deadened, and then a man must be 
drunk and have his pockets well lined. The 
rustic flower-girls and simple hay-makers with 



72 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

whom you dance will drink champagne as if it 
were ginger-beer, and consume all the delicacies 
of the season as if they cost no more than bacon 
and beans. 

The fun, as it is termed, generally commences 
about 11 p.m., by an immense mob of costermon- 
gers, tag-rag and bob-tail, forming themselves 
in a row under the surveillance of the police, to 
watch and criticise the appearance of the mask- 
ers, and specially to regale themselves with 
jokes should any unfortunate do the economical 
and arrive on foot. I hear people say they like 
London — they can do anything they like with- 
out being observed. I doubt that much. I ad- 
vise the strong-minded female who tells me that, 
to walk down Cheapside in a Bloomer costume, 
and I will warrant she will have as great a mob 
accompanying her as followed Kossuth or any 
other hero to Guildhall. But to return to the 
Bal Masque. I presume the company are ar- 
riving and the little boys are cheering, as only 
little boys can, right under cab wheels and in 
between the horses' legs. Some of the company, 
to borrow an ancient witticism, go disguised as 
gentlemen — some buy a mask at the door for 
fourpence — others delight in monstrous noses 



THE BAL MASQUE. 73 

and fearful moustache — others, especially those 
who have fancy dresses, appear as Charles II.s, 
Cardinal Wolseys, Shakspeares, Henry VIXI.s, 
Scotch Highlanders, Australian Diggers, Monks, 
and look far better when they enter than they 
do when they make their exit in the early light 
of a summer morning. The same remark holds 
true of their female companions, who are mostly 
the same ladies that you meet in Regent-street 
in the afternoon, or hanging about the Hay- 
market all night, a class at no time remarkable - 
for modesty, but whom we shall see in the 
course of the evening becoming bold and brazen- 
faced with excitement and wine. But the thea- 
tre is full — the guests are met — the band is 
assembled — the leader wields the baton — the 
sparkling chandeliers give a lustre to the scene, 
and away they bound to the music, whilst from 
the boxes and the gallery admiring crowds look 
down. Yes, there is a wild excitement in the 
hour, which stirs even the pulses of old blood. 
The women, as debardeurs, flower girls, sailor 
boys — many of them with faces fitting them for 
diviner lives, look beautiful even in their degrad- 
ation and shame. Horace tells us, wherever we 
go black care gets up and rides behind. Is it so ? 



74 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Can there be sad hearts beneath those gay exte- 
riors ? Do those cheeks flushed and radiant 
eyes indicate that they belong to those whom all 
moralists have held infamous, all religions con- 
demned, and whose existence our modern civil- 
ization perpetuates and deplores ? Is man an 
immortal being, sent here for awhile to triumph 
over fleshly lusts and passions, to learn to tram- 
ple as dross on the vanities of earth, and to set 
his affections on things above ? Is it true that 
the most successful votaries of pleasure, from 
kingly Solomon to lordly Byron, have borne the 
same testimony to them, that they are not worth 
the gathering, that they are but as apples gath- 
ered by the shore of the Dead Sea, fair to the eye 
but deadly to the taste, and that in no way can 
they answer the need and aspirations of the 
heart of man, which is greater and grander than 
them all ? Have we paid ministers of religion, 
bishops and archbishops, millions and millions 
of pounds to teach men these few self-evident 
truths, and yet do such orgies as those of which 
we write not merely exist but flourish, as if we 
had accepted the creed of the Atheist, — " Let 
us eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow 
we die " ? To-morrow ! who around us now thinks 



THE BAL MASQUE. 75 

of to-morrow? Not the young rake chaffing and 
dancing before us, whose mirth is the delirium 
of forgetfulness and the intoxication of wine, 
whose to-morrow is Whitecross-street Prison or 
the Insolvent Debtors' Court. Not that brazen- 
faced woman now arrayed in splendour, and sur- 
rounded by her admirers, whose to-morrow is 
old age, neglect, and a garret. Not those grey- 
headed gouty old sinners in the boxes, who have 
not the excuse of youth for the follies with 
which they desecrate old age. And certainly 
not that pale clerk, w T ho has most probably em- 
bezzled his employer's money, and who is fran- 
tically exclaiming, " Waiter, another bottle of 
champagne," as he tells the women of his lot 
that he feels " a cup too low." You say he has 
them to cheer him. Tes, till his money is gone. 
When he is at Bow-street, as assuredly he will 
soon be, I promise you they will not be the last 
to give evidence as to his possession of funds, or 
the manner of his spending them. There may 
be honour among thieves, there is none among 
women, when they have once lost their own. 

Still gaily goes on the dancing. Then there 
is supper and wine — and more dancing, and 
more music, and more wine. The reporters for 



76 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

the papers generally leave about supper-time, 
and state that the gaieties were prolonged till a 
late hour; it is well they do this. In the 
earlier part of the evening the rioting and chaff- 
ing is somewhat of the coarsest, and the wit 
somewhat of the poorest ; and the later it 
grows, and the more potent is the vinous 
influence, the less select, or rather the more 
obscene, is the phraseology. In the wild sa- 
turnalia that ensues, all the restraints of de- 
cency and habit are thrown on one side. It 
is time to close, and the conductor sees this. 
Already Henry VIII. is right royally drunk, 
and Cardinal Wolsey is uttering flat blasphemy, 
and one monk has got a black eye, another a 
bloody nose. "Unless, as in the case of Covent 
Garden, the theatre is burned down, and the 
proceedings are abruptly terminated, there is 
a final dance, — a patriotic rendering of the 
national anthem, — and into the air walk, or 
rather tumble, the debauchees, some to go home 
quietly to bed, others to keep it up in the near- 
est coffee-houses and public-houses ; and hand- 
maidens rising early to take in the milk in 
various parts of the metropolis are astonished by 
the exceedingly unsteady gait and singular cos- 



THE BAL MASQUE. 71 

tumes of various dismal gents, who have, if they 
are not absolute fools, sworn that it will be a 
long time before they go to another masque baL 
Such, I believe, is the general conclusion, the 
only exceptions being the costumier who pro- 
vides the dresses, generally a Jew, and the big- 
ger Jew who furnishes the wine. 



TTP THE HAYMARKET. 

If I take up the reports of our various religious 
societies, I find we are spending an enormous 
sum in sending the Gospel into foreign parts. I 
do n't say but what this is praiseworthy — In- 
dians, Turks, Jews, Assyrians, bond and free, 
are they not all children of one common Father 
with ourselves ? — but let us not overlook after 
all the claims of home. I do not speak now of 
the lowest classes, of the refuse and outcasts of 
our towns, of the Pariahs of our civilization ; I 
speak of the heathens in satin and broadcloth, 
of the vice that wears patent leather boots and 
the best French kid, of the intemperance that 
feasts at rich men's tables, and that is born of 
hock, and claret, and champagne. 

But what has all this to do with the Hay- 
market ? Wait awhile, and your curiosity will 
be satisfied. It is day-time, and we will stroll 
up thither. There is nothing peculiar about the 
place, except the unusual number of gin-palaces, 



UP THE HAYMARKET. 79 

hotels, French restaurants, oyster-shops, coffee- 
houses with the blinds drawn, as if to show they 
did not care to do business, and the general 
sleepy appearance of the waiters. There is a cab- 
stand seemingly inclined to shut up shop, and if 
it were not for the omnibuses there would be but 
few indications of life. On the right-hand side 
as you go from Pall Mall there are most respect- 
able shops, but the wonder to me is how they 
manage to attract custom sufficient to enable 
them to pay what must be their very heavy 
rents. At the top of the Haymarket we find the 
street from Leicester-square to Piccadilly always 
full of traffic, and just opposite are the oyster- 
shops, and Turkish divans and cafes, all quiet 
enough now, but at the witching hour of night 
destined to be filled to suffocation with fast men 
and flash women, with cabs and carriages, with 
old hags with fruit and flowers, male vendors of 
pencils and knives, policemen and bullies, fools 
and'rogues. Let us skip over a short interval of 
time, and suppose the neighbouring church bells 
to have chimed the midnight hour. A few steps 
take us to the Lowther Arcade. We take our 
stand with a crowd just opposite a building with 
an entrance lighted with gas, which we learn to 



80 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

be a handsome casino — one of the handsomest in 
London — devoted to dancing and drinking. The 
hour of closing has arrived, and the votaries of 
pleasure, as it is called, are leaving. There are 
an immense number of women all splendidly- 
dressed — from the young girl who has not yet 
learnt the bitterness of the life she has ventured 
on, to the woman thoroughly dead to all feeling, 
all modesty, and shame. It is a sad sight, though 
few see the snake in the grass for the flowers ; 
and of the gay ones there none think they will 
ever become like the bloated, ragged women now 
standing in their patl\ and asking with the true 
professional whine for alms. Some are borne 
away in broughams, some in cabs, but the most 
on foot. Let us now look at the men. You can- 
not see a finer set anywhere. Are not the flower 
of our youth and manhood there ? Of course I 
refer merely to their physical formation. Young 
fellows from the army and navy, men from all 
our universities and inns of court, gents from 
the City and the Stock Exchange, and respect- 
able middle-aged country gentlemen stopping in 
town a night, and just dropping in to see what 
is going on. Before us there is enough material 
to found a mighty empire, including even that 



UP THE HAYMARKET. 81 

pale melancholy little lordling dashing along in 
his cab, who has already, boy as he is, a regi- 
ment ; and all this multitude is going headlong 
to the devil at express speed, in spite of the bap- 
tismal vow and the ministrations of the church. 
But let us see what they are about. Here a por- 
tion seeks supper at the neighbouring oyster- 
rooms, and a rush is made at the waiters as they 
bring in oysters and pale ale, as if the parties 
had been famishing all day. Suppers, I learn 
from the following report which appeared in 
the daily papers a few weeks since, in the Hay- 
market are rather costly. On Friday, in the 
City Sheriffs Court, before Mr. Kerr, an action 
(Belasco v. Goodwin) was heard to recover the 
price of a little supper in the Haymarket, £11 2s. 
Mr. Barnard, for the plaintiff, said his client 
kept a refreshment room in the Haymarket, and 
defendant was an architect and surveyor. Upon 
a certain evening defendant, an ex-pugilist, and 
some friends sat down to supper. They had 
supper, champagne, cigars, pale ale, lemonade, 
soda water, &c, and the bill came to £11 2s., 
including a sum of £5 which Mr. Belasco lent 
defendant, as the party had no money. Wilson, 
one of the waiters at Belasco's, was called, and 
said he recollected the night of the supper. 



82 



THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 



There were the defendant, Mr. Henry Broome, 
and four ladies. His Honour: Ladies (a laugh) ? 
Witness : Well, women. They had supper.°Mr. 
Barnard : The price of a supper in the Hay- 
market is 5s. a piece, is it not ? Witness : That 
is according to what you have (laughter). Some 
of the Ladies had soup (laughter). They had 
champagne, spirits and water, and lemonade. Mr. 
Belasco was called, and deposed to lending the 
defendant £5. His Honour: Now you have 
not proved the cigars, 6s. Plaintiff: They had 
twelve cigars. Mr. Barnard : Did the Ladies 
smoke (laughter)? Plaintiff: No, but Mr. 
Broome did. Sixpence a piece is a very reason- 
able charge for cigars in the Haymarket. His 
Honour : This is an undefended case, gentlemen, 
and you will find for the plaintiff. Verdict for 
the plaintiff. Mr. Barnard : I am instructed to 
apply for a certificate. Your Honour thinks this 
is a fit case to be tried in a superior court ? His 
Honour : Oh, yes. It is right we should know 
how things go on in the world (laughter). I 
have heard, and I dare say so has His Honour, 
of suppers in that neighbourhood more costly. 
I have heard of suppers in a room not far off a 
house of female notoriety, where the expenses 



UP THE HAYMAKKET. 83 

have been something frightful. Men who can- 
not pay their debts, who become bankrupts, 
squander at such places, wantonly and wickedly, 
money which is not theirs. They get off easy 
when they appear in Basinghall-street. No in- 
dignant commissioner hits them hard. The ter- 
rors of the law are for honest men. Some 
people may doubt whether this be right, but on 
the ethics of the question I give no opinion. 

But we must not forget the Haymarket. It 
is crowded yet. Then we knock at the door of 
a place at one time much patronized by a cer- 
tain marquis, and still bearing his name ; and 
we find some that we saw leaving the casino 
here drinking ; or we go into another, where the 
crowd is so dense we have scarce room to stand, 
and find the same occupation vigorously carried 
on. Of course at the places which do not have 
closed doors the bars are all filled, and drinking 
seems the order of the night. In the mean while 
let us march up Piccadilly. The small hours 
have now come, yet the place is redolent with 
life. Young fellows are singing " We won't go 
home till morning" — policemen are bidding the 
unfortunates that won't fee them move on — 
hideous females are waiting to rob the drunkards 

G 2 



84 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

they may meet in their path — and men with 
hawk eyes and hungry aspect are hovering all 
round like so many birds of prey ; and boys — 
for they are everywhere, all dirt and rags, yet 
happy in the richness of young life, for child- 
hood, even the most abandoned, can never be 
sad — dance round us, in the hope that a your 
honour " will find a copper for " poor little 
Jack," singing to us of that far-famed Ratcatch- 
er's Daughter, who 

" Did n't live in Vestministere, 
But the t'other side of the vatere." 

Well, I'd rather be one of them than the pro- 
prietress of that house, with the gas lamp over 
the door, who by this time has been borne by 
the Great Northern in a first-class carriage, side 
by side with senators, and city magistrates, and 
clergymen, and it may be your wife or mine, to 
her country seat. We are standing in the very 
temple of vice — its ministers are all round us. 
Not one unholy appetite but can be gratified 
here ; gamblers, blacklegs, prostitutes, surround 
us on every side. Here law, and order, and de- 
cency are alike all violated. If it be in the pro- 
hibited hours, we can go into coffee-houses and 
get as much brandy as we like, which of course 



UP THE HAYMARKET. 85 

is easily removed when the signal is made that 
the inspector is coming, and is again brought 
out when he is gone. But let us knock at this 
door ; the glare of gas indicates that there is 
something going on, though the cold fowl in the 
window, and the cigar shop close by, scarcely 
inform us what. We pay for admission, and, 
entering through a narrow passage, find our- 
selves in a large saloon, with a balcony all round. 
On the ground-floor of course there is dancing, 
and at the end is a bar where drink is being 
rapidly supplied. Up in the balcony are young 
fellows sitting with gaily- dressed women, drink- 
ing sherry-cobblers and smoking cigars. In 
time the room gets crowded, and the people in 
it grow a little the worse for drink. Though we 
can scarce see for the smoke, and hear on ac- 
count of the roar of many tongues, it is not dif- 
ficult to perceive in the hilariousness of some, in 
the bad temper of others, in the stupidity of 
most, and in the foul language of all, that the 
drink is producing its legitimate effect. That 
girl in satin and rouge in another hour we shall 
see lying on the stone pavement with an un- 
meaning grin, till she is borne by policemen on 
a stretcher to the lock-up. That fine manly lad, 



86 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

out to see life, will sleep to-night where the 
mother now praying for him in her dreams little 
imagines. She would not have sunk so low, he 
never would have blasted a mother's hopes, had 
it not been for the drink. Come out with 
me into the air. What a crowd there is round 
us, all looking pale and seedy in the clear light 
of a summer morn ! What has kept them out 
all night ? What has made them what they are 
but the drink ? You start at that moving mass 
of sores and rags. I remember her fair and 
beautiful, richly apparelled and sumptuously fed; 
but the drink has been her bane, and will be, 
till one of these calm summer mornings she will 
be carried insensible to the nearest hospital, 
thence to be buried, unwept and unknown, in a 
pauper's grave. Away from this moral dung- 
hill. In a few hours the police will have re- 
tired, the debauchees will have gone home to 
bed, the oyster-houses and gin-palaces will be 
deserted, the place will have a serious and quiet 
business air, and bishops will ride past it in their 
cushioned carriages to make speeches at meet- 
ings for the promotion of the Gospel in foreign 
parts. As we go up Begent- street we see the 
lamps being extinguished, and the milk carts 



UP THE HAYMARKET. 87 

going round, and the red newspaper expresses 
tearing along to catch the early train, and the 
green hills of Hampstead looking lovelier than 
ever. In the sober light of day our night in the 
Haymarket will seem unreal, and when we shall 
tell our experiences, we shall be told possibly 
that our picture is overdrawn. 



THE CANTERBURY HALL. 

" Give nie the songs of the people, and you 
may make its laws," said old Fletcher, of Sal- 
toun, with, a knowledge of human nature which 
statesmen do not frequently possess. Necessity 
is a stern taskmaster, and the workman in the 
factory, and the clerk in the counting-house, and 
the shopman behind the counter, are generally 
compelled to stick pretty close to work, and to 
the eye of the observer present very much the 
same appearance. They come at certain hours, 
they go at certain hours, and perform their 
daily toil with a certain amount of effectiveness 
and skill. Very little credit is due to them for 
this — their livelihood depends upon their being 
diligent and active — and hence I know little of 
the individual by merely witnessing him toiling 
for his daily bread. I must follow him home ; 
I must be with him in his hours of relaxation ; 
I must listen to the songs he sings and the jokes 
he attempts ; I must see what is his idea of 



THE CANTERBURY HALL. 89 

pleasure, and thus only can I get at the man as 
he is. Even his church or chapel goings I can- 
not take as indications of his real nature. He 
may go because his parents go, because his mas- 
ter goes, because his friends go, because he has 
been trained to go, because society expects him 
to go, — for a hundred reasons all equally vain 
in the eyes of Him who searcheth the heart and 
trieth the reins of the children of men ; but no 
man is a hypocrite where his pleasures are con- 
cerned. I can gather more about him from the 
way in which he spends his leisure hours than I 
can from his active employments of the day. 
They are poor miserable philosophers indeed, 
and guilty of an enormous blunder, who, in their 
investigation into the moral and social condition 
of the people, refuse to notice the amusements 
of the people in their hours of gaiety and ease. 
I make, then, no apology for introducing you to 
Canterbury Hall. 

The Upper Marsh, Westminster-road, is what 
is called a low neighbourhood. It is not far 
from Astley's Theatre. Eight through it runs 
the South- Western Railway, and everywhere 
about it are planted pawnbrokers' shops, with 
an indescribable amount of dirty second-hand 



90 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

clothes, and monster gin-palaces, with unlimited 
plate-glass and gas. Go along there what hour 
of the day you will, these gin-palaces are full of 
ragged children, hideous old women, and drunken 
men. " The bane and the antidote," you may 
say, "are thus side by side." True, but you 
forget that youth in its search for pleasure is 
blind, and sees not the warning till it is too late ; 
and of the hundreds rushing on to the Canter- 
bury Hall for a quiet glass, none think they will 
fall so low as the victims of intemperance reeling, 
cursing, fighting, blaspheming, in their path. 
But let us pass on. A well lighted entrance at- 
tached to a public-house indicates that we have 
reached our destination. We proceed up a few 
stairs, along a passage lined with handsome en- 
gravings, and very fine pictures, to a bar, where 
we pay sixpence if we take a seat in the body 
of the hall, and ninepence if we are inclined to 
extravagance, and ascend into the balcony. We 
make our way leisurely along the floor of the 
building, which is really a very handsome hall, 
well lighted, and capable of holding fifteen hun- 
dred persons ; the balcony extends round the 
room in the form of a horse-shoe. At the oppo- 
site end to which we enter is the platform, on 



THE CANTERBURY HALL. 91 

which is placed a grand piano and a harmonium, 
on which the performers play in the intervals 
when the professional singers have left the stage. 
The chairman sits just beneath them. It is dull 
work to him ; but there he must sit every night, 
smoking cigars and drinking, from seven till 
twelve o'clock. I fancy I detect a little touch 
of rouge just on the top of his cheek ; he may 
well need it, for even on a fine summer night 
like this the room is crowded, and almost every 
gentleman present has a pipe or a cigar in his 
mouth. Let us look round us; evidently the 
majority present are respectable mechanics, or 
small tradesmen with their wives and daughters 
and sweethearts there. Now and then you see 
a midshipman, or a few fast clerks and ware- 
housemen, who confidentially inform each other 
that there is "no end of talent here/' and that 

Miss te is a doosed fine gal ; " and here, as 

elsewhere, we see a few of the class of unfortun- 
ates, whose staring eyes would fain extort an 
admiration which their persons do not justify. 
Every one is smoking, and every one has a 
glass before him ; but the class that come here 
are economical, and chiefly confine themselves 
to pipes and porter. The presence of the ladies 



92 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

has also a beneficial effect ; I see no indication 
of* intoxication, and certainly none of the songs 
are obscene. The " Perfect Cure " seems the 
attraction of the present hour. A representation 
of a female in a night-dress on the walls of 
London, I presume, possesses great fascination 
for the fast youths of London. And here there 
is the inimitable Mackney, who is here and 
there and everywhere, in the course of the 
evening, and who drives about gaily from one 
Music Hall to another. I was passing along 
Holborn one night, and opposite the door of the 
Music Hall there was a regular crowd. I 
wondered what it must be all about. I expected 
to find that either Lord Palmerston or the 
Bishop of London was to make his debut. I 
asked and was told they were waiting to see 
Mr. Mackney appear, and wonderful was their 
enthusiasm when their hero jumped into his 
Brougham and drove away. These places pay 
well : I am told the profits of the Canterbury 
Hall establishment are some thousand pounds 
a year. And if he had succeeded in his attempt 
and introduced theatrical entertainments I have 
no doubt he would have added very materially 
to his success. The rule seems to be, that you 



THE CANTERBURY HALL. 93 

must appeal to an Englishman through his 

sense of feeding and drinking ; this I think is 

the great mistake of these places, music of 

itself ought to be a sufficient attraction. As it 

is, the attraction is the drinking, and you are 

more likely to make men drink too much at 

such places, than if you had no music, as an 

excuse for their going to them. We want to 

train man up, not to decrease his moral nerve. 

I doubt whether this is achieved by such a 

chorus as the following : — 

Ah ! let us join in the toast, 
In the song and the revelling, 
Passing the night in mirthful pleasure, 
"While love shall teach us how to treasure 
This paradise on earth. 

I may think I have heard sublimer compo- 
sitions than the following, sung by Mrs. Caul- 
field with great applause : — 

Fare you well, my own Mary Anne. 

Fare you well for awhile : 
For the ship it is ready, and the wind it is fair, 

And I am hound for the sea, Mary Ajme. 
Fare you well, &c. 

Do n't you see that turtle dove, 

A sitting on yonder pile, 
Lamenting the loss of its own true love ? — 

And so am I for mine, Mary Anne. 

Fare you well, &c. 



94 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

A lobster in a lobster-pot, 

A blue-fish wriggling on a book, 
May suffer some, but, ob ! no not 

"What I do feel for my Mary Anne." 

Fare you well, &c. 

The pride of all the produce rare, 

That in our kitchen garden grow'd, 
"Was pumpkins, but none could compare 

In angel-form to my Mary Anne. 

Fare you well, &c. 

or of the following, sung by Mrs Caulfield with 
still greater applause : — 

Down in Skytown lived a maid, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
Churning butter was her trade, i 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
She loved a feller whose name was Will, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
His dad he used to own the mill, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 

Choeus. 

Kemo, kimo, where ? oh there ! my high, my low, 

Then in came Sally singing, 
Sometimes, Medley winkum lingtum nip cat. 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 

She wanted Will for worse or better, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
She 'd have married, but dad would n't let her. 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 



THE CANTERBURY HALL. 95 

And so she went and got a knife, 

Sing song Polly won't you try rae, oh ? 
She broke her heart and lost her life, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 

Kemo, kimo, &c. 

Then Josh he felt his dander risin', 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
So he went and swallow' d pisin, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
The village folks laugh' d in their sleeve, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 
For Jordan 's a hard road to travel, I believe, 

Sing song Polly won't you try me, oh ? 

Kemo, kimo, &c. 

But, compared with many of the places frequent- 
ed by both sexes, Canterbury Hall is a respect- 
able place. I may think that more rational 
amusement might be found than by sitting smok- 
ing and drinking in a large room on a hot sum- 
mer's night. I may have my doubts whether all 
go home sober — the presence of a policeman in 
the room indicated that at times there was need 
for his services — but I believe the association of 
song and drinking and amusements pernicious 
in the extreme ; and, knowing that man needs 
relaxation — that he must have his hour of amuse- 
ment as well as of work — I cannot too earnestly 
press upon the advocates of Temperance reform 
the desirableness of their out-bidding the public- 



96 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

house in the attempts to cater for the entertain- 
ment of the people. That they do not do so, is 
clear. Where once we had a National Hall in 
Holborn, for the action of moral influences, a 
publican has erected a hall — for singing and 
drinking — capable, I should think, of holding 
1200 people, and crammed every night. Then 
the " Lord Raglan " holds as many. Nor are 
these alone the only competitors for public 
patronage; their name is Legion. " The Oxford," 
the new music-hall, close to Tottenham Court 
Road, opened in March of this year, with a fairly 
good miscellaneous concert, is one of the hand- 
somest, if not the handsomest, of concert rooms 
in London. " It measures 94 feet in length, 44 
feet in width, and 41 feet high. The width of 
44 feet only represents the dimensions between 
the columns which support the roof ; beyond 
these there is a promenade 6 feet wide, making 
the total width 56 feet." 



RATCLIFFE-HIGHWAY. 

London is several cities rolled into one. If 
we walk along Regent- street, it is a city of gor- 
geous shops, — if yon turn ihto the West, of parks 
and palaces, — if you traverse St. Giles, of gin 
and dirt ; — again, in Belgravia it is rich and 
grand, — in Pimlico it is poor and pretentious, — 
in Russell-square it is well to do, — in Islington 
it is plain and pious ; and, strange as it may 
seem, the people are equally localised in their 
ideas. Jobson, the Stock-broker, lives at Clap- 
ham, and for years he has never set foot in any 
other streets than those leading from the Stock 
Exchange to that select and favoured spot. The 
law clerks, who live in Pimlico, seldom stray 
further than John-street, Bedford-row. The city 
gents from Islington and Holloway generally 
cluster round the Bank or the Post-office, and 
for years go in the morning and return at night 
by one unvaried route. The races are equally 
distinct. The swells in the Park, the millers in 



98 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Mark-lane, the graziers in the new cattle-mar- 
ket, the Jews in Houndsditch or Holy well-street, 
the prim pale lads in the city, the sailors in 
Deptford and Wapping, the German sugar- 
bakers in Whitechapel, really form distinct 
communities, and are as worth studying as any 
race of 

" Bed Indians dwelling beyond the sunset, 
And the baths of all the Western stars." 

I should not like a son of mine to be born and 
bred in Eatcliffe-highway. That there would 
be a charming independence in his character, 
a spurning of that dreary conventionalism which 
makes cowards of us all, and under the deadly 
weight of which the heart of this great old Eng- 
land seems becoming daily more sick and sad, 
a cosmopolitanism rich and racy in the extreme, 
— all this I admit I should have every reason to 
expect, but, at the same time, I believe the dis- 
advantages would preponderate vastly. How is 
this? you ask. Does not Katcliffe-highway 
form part of our highly- favoured land ? I grant 
it does. I confess that there the Queen's writ 
is a power, that it boasts the protection of the 
police, that it pays rates and taxes, that it has 



RATCLIFFE-HIGHWAY. 99 

its churches and chapels, that it is not cut off 
from the rest of the empire, that it is traversed 
by railways, by cabs and busses, and by postmen. 
Nevertheless, Ratcliffe- highway is not a favour- 
ite spot of mine. I saw lately a letter from an 
Englishman in the Times, complaining of the 
magistrates of Hamburg, because when he was 
coming from church with some ladies, he strayed 
into a street where his sense of decorum was 
very properly shocked. I know the street as I 
do every street in Hamburg, and I know this, 
that it ill becomes Englishmen to write of the 
immorality of Hamburg, or any other continental 
town. Let him walk down Ratcliffe-highway or 
any other spot where vice loses all its charms by 
appearing in all its grossness. I fear that it is 
not true generally to the eyes of the class she 
leads astray, that 

" Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, 
That to be hated, needs but to be seen," 

but I think it is true, or at any rate it con- 
tains a portion of truth, so far as regards Eat- 
cliffe-highway, a stroll in which place is sure 
to shock more senses than one. In beastliness 
I think it surpasses Cologne with its seven 



100 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

and thirty stenches, or even Bristol or a Welsh 
town. 

Hatcliffe-highway lies contiguous to the com- 
merce and the port of London. The men and 
boys engaged in navigating merchant vessels be- 
longing to ports of the British Empire were, in 
1851, 240,298 ; and of this multitude a large 
portion at some time or other resides in Ratcliffe- 
highway. In 1856, 826 vessels, with a tonnage 
of 498,594 tons, entered the port of London. 
Jack, when he's ashore, resides here, and Jack 
ashore is the weakest and simplest of men. As 
an illustration of the„way in which Jack is done 
— whether in any provincial port or London, for 
crimps are the same all the world over, — let me 
refer to a case heard at the Tynemouth Police 
Court towards the end of last year. A man 
named Glover, the landlord of a low public- 
house in Clive-street, a crimp and sailors' lodg- 
ing-house keeper, was summoned under the 
235th and 236th clauses of the Merchant Ship- 
ping Act of 1854, charged with having taken 
into his possession the moneys and effects of 
James Hall, a seaman, and with having refused 
to return and pay the same back to Hall when 
requested to do so. It appears, after being en- 



RATCLIFFE-HIGHW A Y. 101 

gaged in the Black Sea in the transport service 
during the late war, Hall, who had to receive 
£30 15s., took up his quarters at Glover's, and 
made him his "purser." Glover charged him 
14s. a-week for his lodgings, the same as the 
Sailor's Home, but at the end of 16 days he told 
him that his money was all gone, and bought 
the plaintiff's neckerchief of him for Is., which 
he also spent in drink. The sailor, finding him- 
self destitute, had applied to the authorities, who 
summoned Glover. Glover, in his defence, 
stated that Hall had spent his money in drink 
and treating, keeping a couple of bagpipers to 
play to him all the time he was on the spree. 
Glover produced the following extraordinary 
account against Hall: — "Dec. 9th. — 20 pints 
of rum, £2 6s. 6d. ; 20 quarts of beer, and 15 
ounces of tobacco, 15s. lOd. — 8 glasses of rum, 
and 2s. 6d. borrowed money, 4s. 6d. 11th. — 
Borrowed money, 2s. 6d. ; 5 pints of rum, 5 
gills of rum, and 15 quarts of ale, £1 12s. 6d. ; 
6 ounces of tobacco, 2 glasses of gin, and 2 gills 
of brandy, 6s. 6d. 12th.— Cash, 2s., 15 pints of 
rum, and 28 gills of rum, £3 ; 4 quarts, half a 
gallon, and 22 gills of beer, £1 3s. 9d. ; 15 
glasses of rum and 11 glasses of beer, 9s. 3d. ; 



102 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

pint of brandy and 16 glasses of gin, 8s. ; 36 
ounces of tobacco and 3^ glasses of gin, 12s. 
4^d. 13th. — 18 pints of rum, 15 gills of rum, 
and 26 quarts of beer, £3 4s. ; 26 bottles of 
lemonade, and 28 gills of beer, £1 ; 14 ounces 
of tobacco, 6 glasses of gin, 6s. 2d. ; 12 glasses 
of gingerade, and cash 5s., 8s. ; 1 week's board, 
14s. Paid for clothes, £1 2s. 6d. ; 2 pints of 
rum, 10 gills of rum, and 4 glasses of beer, 16s. ; 
24 glasses of spirits, 9 quarts of beer, and 7 
ounces of tobacco, 14s. 7d. 15th. — 16 half 
glasses of spirits, 10 glasses and 2 gills of rum, 
and 1J ounce of tobacco, and beer, 2s. lOd. ; 
fortnight's board, £1 8s. ; cash, £2 18s. ; spirits, 
tobacco, and rum, 4s. l^d. ; cash, 5s. 17th. — 
Cash, 7s. ; 20 glasses of spirits, and 8 quarts of 
ale, 9s. 4d. 18th. — Ale, spirits, and tobacco, 
16s. 4d. 19th. — 35 glasses of spirits, and 20 
glasses of ale, and 2 glasses of brandy, £1 4s. 
lOd. 20th. — Ale, tobacco, and cash, 7s. 24th, 
25th, and 26th. — Ale and spirits, 7s. lid., and 
other items, making up the amount in hand. 
The defendant had refused to deliver up Hall's 
clothes on the plea that the man was in his debt. 
Now in Ratcliffe-highway such men as Glover 
abound. It is unnecessary then to describe the 



RATCL1FFE-HIGHWAY. 103 

character of the tradesmen in Ratcliffe-highway, 
or the character of their wares. At one shop 
there are the enormous boots, which only navvies 
and sailors have strength to wear; at another 
there are oilskin caps, and coats and trousers, or 
rough woollen shirts, piled up in gigantic masses. 
One shop rejoices in compasses and charts, and 
another in the huge silver watches which Jack 
invariably affects. The descendants of Abraham 
swarm here. They sell little fish fried in oil ; 
they deal in second-hand clothes ; they keep 
lodging-houses ; I believe they stick at nothing 
to turn a penny, and do n't break their hearts if 
the penny turns out a dishonest one. Every- 
thing has a nautical adaptation. The songs 
sung are nautical. The last time I was there 
an old woman was singing to a crowd of the 
" Saucy Sailor Boy " who, coming disguised in 
poverty to his lady love, is by her ignominiously 
rejected, to whom rejecting he tells of his real 
riches, and by whom the rejection is eagerly re- 
called, but in vain, for the Saucy Sailor Boy 
declares : — 

" Do you think I am foolish, love ? 
Do you think I am mad, 
Tor to wed a poor country girl, 
When there's fortune to be had ? 



104 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

''So I'll cross the briny ocean, 

Where the meadows are so green, 
And since you have refused my offer, love, 
Some other girl shall wear the ring." 

Up and down Ratcliffe-highway do the 
sailors of every country under heaven stroll- 
Greeks and Scythians, bond and free. Uncle 
Tom's numerous progeny are there — Lascars, 
Chinese, bold Britons, swarthy Italians, sharp 
Yankees, fair-haired Saxons, and adventurous 
Danes — men who worship a hundred gods, and 
men who worship none. They have ploughed 
the stormy main, they have known the perils of 
a treacherous sea and of a lee shore ; but there 
are worse perils, and those perils await them in 
Ratcliffe-highway. It is night, and the glare 
of gas gives the street a cheerful appearance. 
We pass the Sailor's Home, a noble institution 
which deserves our cordial support and praise, 
and find at almost every step pitfalls for poor 
Jack. Every few yards we come to a beer- 
shop or a public-house, the doors of which stand 
temptingly open, and from the upper room of 
which may be heard the sound of the mirth-in- 
spiring violin, and the tramp of toes neither 
" light nor fantastic." There were public-houses 



P. ATCLIFFE- HIGHWAY. 105 

here — I know not if the custom prevails now 
— to which was attached a crew of infamous 
women ; these bring Jack into the house to treat 
them, but while Jack drinks gin the landlord 
gives them from another tap water, and then 
against their sober villany poor Jack has no 
chance. I fear many respectable people in this 
neighbourhood have thus made fortunes. Jack 
is prone to grog and dancing, and here they 
meet him at every turn. Women, wild-eyed, 
boisterous, with cheeks red with rouge and flabby 
with intemperance, decked out with dresses and 
ribbons of the gayest hue, are met with by hun- 
dreds — all alike equally coarse, and insolent, and 
unlovely in manners and appearance, but all 
equally resolved on victimising poor Jack. They 
dance with him in the beer-shop — they drink 
with him in the bar — they walk with him in the 
streets — they go with him to such places as Wil- 
ton's Music Hall, where each Jack Tar may be 
seen sitting with his pipe and his pot, witnessing 
dramatic performances not very artistic, but 
really, on the score of morality, not so objection- 
able as what I have seen applauded by an Adel- 
phi audience, or patronised by the upper classes 
at her Majesty's Theatre. And thus the even- 



106 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

ing passes away; the publicans grow rich, the 
keepers of infamous houses fatten on their dis- 
honest gains — obese Jews and Jewesses become 
more so. The grog gets into Jack's head — 
the unruly tongue of woman is loosened — there 
are quarrels, and blows, and blood drawn, and 
heads broken, and cries of police, and victims in 
abundance for the station-house, or the hospital, 
or the union-house, or the lunatic asylum, save 
when some forlorn one (and not seldom either is 
this the case), reft of hope or maddened by drink 
and shame, plunges in the muddy waters of some 
neighbouring dock, to find the oblivion she found 
not in the dancing and drinking houses of Rat- 
cliffe-highway. 



JUDGE AND JURY CLUBS. 

This is a comic age in which, we live. We 
are overdone with funny writers. The ghastliest 
attempts at liveliness surround us on every side. 
I would not bring back the grave deportment 
and stately etiquette of days gone by, nor could 
I if I would. But are we not running to another 
extreme ? Is there not a lack of reverence and 
dignity ? If we train up our youth to comic 
Blacks tones, and teach them to extract fun out 
of the grandest history done in modern Europe 
— the history of the Anglo-Saxon race — of the 
race that has founded civil and religious liberty, 
and still nurses it in the face of a frowning con- 
tinent, what can we expect ? Men are what we 
make them. "Just as the twig is bent the 
tree 's inclined." A feeble and contemptible 
father is succeeded by a feeble and contemptible 
son. Have no grand creed of your own to make 
your daily path lustrous with the light of 
heaven. Crack your weak jest and pun at all 



108 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

men have reverenced. Learn from Punch to 
titter, no matter the theme. And can yon won- 
der that your son believes not in man's honour 
or woman's love — in Grod or the devil, but solely 
in the Holborn Casino and Cremorne ? For in- 
stance, is not law one of the most wonderful 
achievements of civilisation ? I do not go so far 
as " the judicious Hooker." I do not say with 
him that her seat is the throne of Grod, her voice 
the harmony of the universe, but is it not won- 
derful to think of the complex arrangements of 
which the judge, seated in his robes on the bench, 
administering law, is the outward sign ? In the 
first place, man must have learnt to give up a 
primary instinct of his nature — that of self- 
revenge. Then the central power in the darkest 
parts of the land must have become dominant. 
What ages must have past before law dared 
meddle with privilege, or before its administra- 
tors could realize the fact of the sanctity of the 
individual man, whether he starved in a garret 
or feasted in a palace. And when the judges 
went on circuit, with the gorgeous cavalcade of 
the olden time, what terror was struck into the 
hearts of the rustics, and how patent became 
to them the strength and dignity of law. Now 



JUDGE AND JURY CLUBS. 109 

why burlesque this ? The idea is good and true, 
yet the burlesque is permitted and exists, aye, 
even to this day. 

It is years since I was at a Judge and Jury 
Club, but I believe their character is in no de- 
gree changed. The one I speak of met in an 
hotel not far from Covent- garden, and was pre- 
sided over by a man famous in his day for his 
power of double entendre. About nine o'clock 
in the evening, if you went up-stairs you would 
find a large room with benches capable of ac- 
commodating, I should think, a hundred, or a 
hundred and fifty persons. This room was ge- 
nerally well filled, and by their appearance the 
audience was one you would call respectable. 
The entrance fee entitled you to refreshment, 
and that refreshment, in the shape of intoxicat- 
ing liquor, was by that time before each visitant. 
After waiting a few minutes, a rustle at the en- 
trance would cause you to turn your eyes in that 
direction, when, heralded by a crier with a gown 
and a staff of office, exclaiming, " Make way for 
my Lord Chief Baron," that illustrious indi- 
vidual would be seen wending his way to his 
appointed seat. The man I write of was then 
about thirty-five, but he appeared much older, 



110 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

and in his robes of office and with his judicial 
wig had almost a venerable appearance. Having 
seated himself and bowed to the bar — one of 
them they called the double of Brougham had 
been a dissenting minister (he is dead now — he 
died "game," they told me) — the Lord Chief 
Baron called for a cigar and glass of brandy and 
water, and, having observed that the waiter was 
in the room and that he hoped gentlemen would 
give their orders, the proceedings of the evening 
commenced. A jury was selected ; the prose- 
cutor opened his case, which, to suit the depraved 
taste of his patrons, was invariably one of se- 
duction or crim. con. Witnesses were examined 
and cross-examined, the females being men 
dressed up in women's clothes, and everything 
was done that could be to pander to the lowest 
propensities of depraved humanity. I do not 
believe the audience could have stood this if 
it had not been for the drink. As it was, I be- 
lieve many a youth fresh from home felt a little 
ashamed of himself that he should be in such 
company listening to such unmitigated ribaldry, 
but these reflections were soon drowned in the 
flowing bowl, and the lad, if he blushed at first, 
soon learned to laugh. I write of the time 



JUDGE AXD JURY CLUBS. Ill 

when the railway mania had filled London with 
overpaid engineers, and attorneys, and parlia- 
mentary witnesses, only too anxious to see life, 
as they called it, and by whom this beastly en- 
tertainment was frequented night after night. I 
dare not even attempt to give a faint outline of 
the proceedings. After the defence, came the 
summing up, which men about town told you 
was a model of wit, but in which the wit bore 
but a small proportion to the obscenity. The 
jury were complimented on their intelligent and 
lascivious appearance, all the filthy particulars 
which had been noticed were referred to Dog 
Latin, and poetical quotations were plentifully 
thrown in ; and by twelve, amidst the plaudits 
of the audience, the affair, so far as the Judge 
and Jury Club was concerned, was over. Then 
there was supper for such as wished it, and an 
entertainment to follow, either in the shape of a 
concert or of an exhibition of Poses Plastiques. 
To these subsequent entertainments ladies were 
generally admitted — and perhaps the less I say 
about them or their proceedings the better. If 
I refer to them at all, it is but as an illustration 
of the drinking customs of society. These Judge 
and Jury Clubs after all are but an excuse for 



112 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

drinking. They are held at public-houses, — there 
is drinking going on all the time the trial lasts, 
— nor could sober men listen unless they had the 
drink. I believe an attempt has been made to 
introduce this kind of thing to the provinces, but 
it has not answered. In all our provincial towns 
there exists a public opinion which guarantees 
decency to a certain extent. In the metropolis 
this public opinion does not exist. No one knows 
that I frequent Judge and Jury Clubs, and I 
lose no social status if I do ; and some of the 
men who patronise them have no social status 
to lose. In one of the lowest beershops in the 
New Cut the other day I saw it announced 
that on Sunday night a Judge and Jury Club 
was held. It is too true that we are, as Tenny- 
son says, 

u Fish, that love the mud, 
Rising to no fancy flies.' ' 

But man does not naturally revel in obscenity ; 
the modesty of nature will stick to him for years. 
But the Judge and Jury Clubs make you familiar 
with the manners of the stews ; and I solemnly 
believe that in Sodom and Gromorrah nothing 
more filthy could have been talked about, and 
that this side Pandemonium there is nothing 



JUDGE AND JURY CLUBS. 113 

more debasing or debased. If you wish to see 
your son thoroughly depraved, send him to a 
Judge and Jury Club. In a little while he will 
come back to you with every noble principle 
blotted out, with a mind stored with pollution, 
and with a fitting phraseology, ready to run a 
mad career of debauchery and vice. Some fifteen 
years back the writer was at college, and one of 
his fellow-students was a fine young fellow, the 
heir to a decent fortune, and said to be connect- 
ed with a noble family. The last time I was 
at the Judge and Jury he was employed as one 
of the mock counsel ; but he became too intem- 
perate even for that, and enlisted, and miserably 
died. They have tragic ends, many of these 
frequenters of Judge and Jury Clubs 5 and it is 
sad to think that, when the merriment is the 
loudest, and the drink is most stimulating, and 
the fellowship most jovial, there is burlesque 
even then. 



THE CAVE OE HABMONY. 

Reader, do you know the Cave of Harmony ? 
If you do not, so much the better. If you are 
one of its habitues, I fear no words of mine can 
make you forsake it. It is said the Cave is. 
altered since we were there — so much the bet- 
ter ; Thackeray, I think, had something to do 
with that reform — and that now nothing ob- 
jectionable is sung. Still, I doubt w r hether 
drinking and harmony after 12 p. m. can do 
much good. You and I, it may be, are oxa men, 

" Ellin' d trunks on wither 'd forks, 
Empty scarecrows you and'L" 

We have run through youth with money in our 
pockets and time on our hands, and have seen 
all that K fe can offer, and know, what so many 
do not, that pleasure's cup but sparkles near the 
brim. What we have done and been has been 
wine working on the fiery impulses of young 
blood, but now, sir, with our hair turning grey 
and our eyes growing dim, shall we not lift up a 



THE CAVE OF HARMONY. . 115 

warning voice, and ask youth, to pause ere it 
take the final plunge which for years, it may be 
for ever, shall estrange it from innocence, and 
peace, and God ? 

It is midnight in the great city in which we 
write. For a while sorrow and care are veiled 
from the eyes of men, and to the poorest and 
most toilworn come pleasant dreams. The shops 
have long been closed, the roar of the streets 
has died away, the theatres have discharged 
their jaded crowds, and as we wa ] k along, meet- 
ing now and then a poor drunkard reeling home 
— or a policeman silently patrolling the streets — 
or one of the unfortunates, by turns man's victim 
and cr» A — or some of the votaries of dissipation 
who are awake when other men are asleep — we 
realize all the grandeur and poetry and magnifi- 
cence of London by night, and wonder not that 
Savage and Johnson should have found such a 
fascination in the scene, and that other sons of 
genius have read such sermons in its eloquent 
stones. Let us stroll towards Covent Garden — 
in another hour it will be ringing with the oaths 
and execrations of seemingly all the market gar- 
deners in Middlesex — and enter that doorway 
indicated by the glare of gas ; come with me 
i 2 



116 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

down these stairs, and into that room, the door 
of which the waiter holds obligingly open. Let 
us stand here while we recover from the effect of 
the fumes of grog and the smoke of tobacco. 
You find yourself in a room holding perhaps 
1200 gentlemen ; look around, this is a respect- 
able place, this Cave of Harmony, there are no 
poor people here. We have heavy swells, mous- 
tached, and with white kids — -officers in the 
army — scions of noble houses — country gentle- 
men, and merchants, and lawyers in town on 
business — literary men, medical students, and 
old fogies, with every moral sensibility dead, 
who have sat here for years listening to the 
same songs and the same outpourings ; they 
could tell you something, these old fogies — what 
changes they have seen, as one generation after 
another of students and rakes and men about 
town have thought it fast to sup every night 
within these walls ; of course the majority in 
the room are clerks, and commercial gents, and 
fellows in Government situations, learning here 
the extravagance which in time will compel 
them to commit frauds and forgery, and eventu- 
ally perhaps land them in a felon's jail. For 
the Cave of Harmony is not a cheap place to 



THE CAVE OF HARMONY. 117 

sup at. The chop and baked potatoes are ex- 
cellent but dear, and four or five shillings is 
a sum soon spent if you do as every one here 
does, — take your pint of stout, and three or four 
glasses of grog ; and the chances are you will 
meet a friend, who will persuade you to make a 
night of it and stroll West with him, where you 
will see Vice flaunting more finely and with 
greater bravery than in any other capital in 
Europe. But let us drop these considerations. 
We are at one end of a long room, at the other 
is a raised platform, on which is a piano, and in 
front of which some half-dozen gentlemen are 
seated — these are the performers. Their faces 
you know well enough, for they are in much 
repute for dinners at the London Tavern or the 
Freemasons, and the last time I dined with the 
Indigent Blind — with a High Church dignitary 
in the chair — we had the whole half-dozen to 
assist ; they are good singers, I willingly confess, 
and sing many of them touching songs of youth, 
and hope, and true love, and home — but they 
don't sing the better for singing during the 
small hours and in a drinking saloon. That 
little Hebrew, who has been at it, he tells me, 
for upwards of forty years, is not an impro- 



118 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

visatore like Theodore Hook, but he does it well 
enough for an audience good-natured and a 
little the worse for drink. The imitations of a 
barnyard, with its cows, and geese, and turkeys, 
and other live stock, by that poor, seedy, 
needy, smiling German, are amusing to hear 
once, but every one here has heard them over 
and over again. What they need is something 
richer, and more spicy, as they term it. You 
see they are getting tired of sentimental songs, 
and war songs, and madrigals, and glees. They 
do n't want to hear 

" I know a maiden fair to see," 

or, 

" Down ?n a flowery vale, 
All on a summer morning," 

or, 

" In going to my lonely bed 
As one that would have slept." 

They are careless when Podder sings " Kathleen 

Mavourneen," and are indifferent to the manner 

in which Brown renders 

" BeautnV Venice, city of song." 

In old times, before the obscenity of the place 

was done away with, towards early morning it 

seemed a perfect Babel. A favourite's name was 

sounded — it was repeated with every variety of 



THE CAVE OF HARMONY. 119 

emphasis in every corner of the room ; the tables 
were struck with drunken fists till the tumult 
became a perfect storm ; the master of the place 
raps the table with an auctioneer's hammer — 

"Silence, gentlemen, if you please, Mr 

will sing a comic song ; " and immediately a 
man in a beggar's costume, and with the face of 
an idiot, jumps upon the stage. His appearance 
was a signal for a T T hirlwind of applause. He sang, 
with accompanying action, some dozen verses of 
doggerel, remarkable for obscenity and imbecility. 
You looked around, but not a blush did you see in 
that crowded room ; not one single head was held 
dow a in shame ; not one high-spirited gentleman 
rushed indignantly from the place. On the co_ - 
trary, the singer was greeted with the most lavish 
expression of applause, continued so loudly and 
so long that again the proprietor had to an- 
nounce, " Mr will sing another comic 

song." But this time the comic singer would not 
dress for his part, and you saw a young, good- 
looking, well-dressed, gentlemanly fellow volun- 
tarily degrading himself for the pleasure of men 
more degraded still. You tell me the comic 
singer is a happy fellow, that he gets six guineas 
a-week, that he lives in a nice little cottage in 



120 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

the Hampstead-road. I know better than you ; 
the man I write of, after having been the attrac- 
tion of the Cave of Harmony for years, after hav- 
ing been feasted by the nobility and gentry, after 
having led a career of pleasure on the most ex- 
travagant scale, will go down yet young as a 
beggar to one of our sea-port towns, and, after 
craving in vain a refuge from the winter's cold 
and a crust of bread, will die in the workhouse, 
and be buried in a pauper's grave. How many 
of the gay young fellows now around us will 
have a similar termination to their career ! I 
never can pass the Cave of Harmony without 
thinking of the comic singer as last I saw him 
— in the very flush of health and life, stimulated 
by wine and applause, little dreaming of the 
workhouse in which he was so soon to beg for 
room to die. But this exhibition is of the past, — 
the place is reformed ; and how it is patronized 
is clear, when I state that on the night of the 
marriage of the Princess Royal, there were con- 
sumed in it 21 dozen kidneys, 478 chops, 280 
Welsh rabbits, 1500 glasses of stout, and a 
hogshead of pale ale. 



DISCUSSION CLUBS. 

It is the condition of a public-house that it 
must do a good business some way or other. Mr. 
Hinton, who has just got his license for High- 
bury Barn, says the dining apartment fell off 
and he was obliged to institute Soirees Dan- 
santes. Sometimes the publican gets a female 
dressed up in a Bloomer costume ; sometimes he 
has for his barman a giant, or a dwarf, or an 
Albino, or a Kaffir chief — actually as an attrac- 
tion to decent people to go and drink their pot 
of beer. I find the following advertisement in 
the Morning Advertiser. 

" The Sheep-eater of Hindostan. — To be seen, 
the Sheep-eater of Hindostan, representing an 
exhibition which took place on the 3rd of March, 
1796, before Colonel Patrick Douglas and other 
officers of a battalion of Native Infantry, and a 
great concourse of the inhabitants of the military 
station of Futtehghur. It is engraved from a 
sketch, taken on the spot by a native artist, and 



122 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

under the inspection of Major-General Hard- 
wicke, F. R. S. The Sheep-eater was a native 
of India, about thirty years of age, five feet nine 
inches high, slender, well formed, and rather 
muscular. He was attended by a very old man, 
whom he called his father or 1 preceptor, termed 
by the natives Grooroo or Priest, who stated he 
had formerly followed the same practice. He 
was above the ordinary stature of the natives of 
India, and wore his hair, which was of great 
length, coiled into the form of a turban ; and 
his beard was twisted b'ke a rope, and nearly 
reached his feet, being five feet eight inches m 
length. The exhibitor began his operation by 
raising the sheep from the ground with his 
teeth. He then threw the animal on its back, 
and, with his teeth and hands only, separated 
the limbs, and stript the flesh from the bon >. 
After mixing dust with the meat, by rubbing 
it on the ground, in that dirty state he swal- 
lowed what he tore off. The last part of the 
operation was chewing the leaves of a plant, the 
local name of which is Madaar (asclepias gigan- 
tea), and the milky juice, 5 which is of a very cor- 
rosive nature, he swallowed. Havmg made a 
collection of money, and the assemblage of people 



DISCUSSION CLUBS. 123 

being much increased, he offered to eat a second 
sheep, and actuary commenced the operation as 
before. It may be proper to observe, that the 
sheep in most parts of Ind^a are as smaR as the 
Welsh sheep of Great Britain. No. 1. represents 
lifting the sheep from the ground with his teeth 
only. 2. Having thrown the sheep on its back, 
he extends the limbs, preparatory to No. 3. 3. 
Ripping the animal open from the flank to the 
breast. 4. Having removed the intestines, &c, 
he buries his head in the body, to drink the 
blood collected. 5. Exhibiting his face, after 
this sanguinary draught. 6. Having devoured 
every portion of flesh from the bones, he chews 
the plant Madaar. 7. After changing his waist- 
cloth, he returns with his Gooroo, or preceptor, 
and offers to eat the second sheep, for the satis- 
faction of the increased number of spectators." 

I do not give the name of the spirited pro- 
prietor, but in his advertisement he declares he 
intends exhibiting it over the bar for a short 
time gratuitously. This is rich ; it is like the 
doctor's advice gratis. 

Now in the same manner the publicans pro- 
vide a weekly discussion meeting for that part of 
the public that loves to hear itself speak. There 



124 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

is one at the Belvidere, Pentonville ; another at 
the Horns, Kennington. Fleet-street is much 
favoured. There are the Temple Forum, the 
Cogers' Hall, and another large room in Shoe- 
lane. These are gratuitous, like the picture in 
the above advertisement — that is, you are ex- 
pected to sit and drink all night. These are 
not places like the British Inquisition, and the 
Robin Hood Society, and other debating 
societies, of the Pitt era. The most celebrated 
one is that which meets not far from the 
Temple, presided ove** by the editor of a Sun- 
day paper, and assisted by several reporters 
connected with the daily journals. One of them 
not long since contested an Irish borough on Pro- 
testant principles, but unfortunately, instead of 
being returned, found himself in gaol for election 
expenses. Besides these, there are many third 
and fourth-rate literary men — a class, I fear (I 
speak of the minors), the most braggart, lying, 
and needy under heaven — men who are going to 
do wonders, but who never do — whose success, 
if such a term may be applied to their career, 
arises simply from their power of brag, and from 
the possession of an enviable amount of self- 
esteem. Then there are briefless barristers, but 



DISCUSSION CLUBS. 125 

too happy to have an opportunity of airing their 
dictionaries, and tradesmen, and clerks, all fancy- 
ing that there is no need why they should hide 
their talents under a napkin. Still these places 
do not flourish, and there are more bad speeches 
made than good ones. You are cooped up in an 
inconvenient apartment, suffocated by tobacco- 
smoke, and very unpleasantly affected by the 
beer and gin-and-water which every one feels 
bound to consume. The waiter is in the room, 
and you are expected to give your orders. The 
speaking is a secondary consideration. The first 
thing you are required to do is to drink. I have 
now in my mind's eye a young fellow who was a 
great man at one of these places. He was a clerk 
with limited means, but he came to these places 
night after night, and drank and spent his money 
freely. It is the old tale over again. He was 
intrusted with his employer's cash. He applied 
some of it to liquidate his expenses. He was 
unable to replace it. Discovery was made at last ; 
he is now in Newgate, and his wife — for he was 
just married — is breaking her young heart with 
shame and want. The curse of these public-houses 
is that they lead men into expense and reduce 
them into poverty, if they do not almost necessi- 



126 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

tate crime. A discussion is all very well, and 
the habit of being able to get up and say a few 
words when occasion requires pertinent and 
apropos is invaluable, but to acquire that habit 
it is scarcely worth while to sit all night toping, 
while Smithers is playing old gooseberry with 
his H's, or O'Plaherty raving of the wrongs of 
the Green Isle. The questions discussed are 
generally such as are peculiar to the time. Was 
Lord Cardigan a hero? Does Sir Benjamin 
Hall deserve well of the public for his conduct 
with reference to Sunday bands ? Does the 
Palmerston cabinet deserve the support of the 
country ? Would Lord John Russell's scheme 
of national education, if carried out, be a public 
benefit ? Let men talk on these subjects if they 
will, and as long as they will, but I think they 
will think more clearly, and talk better, and 
come sooner to a rational decision, if they do not 
drirk. I am sure I have seen the audience and 
the orators more inflamed by beer than by elo- 
quence, and when turned out into the street after 
a long sitting, many, I imagine, have seen a 
couple of moons and double the usual allowance 
of lamps and police. The worst of it is, that 
after the discussion is over, there will be always 



DISCUSSION CLUBS. 127 

a few stop to have a bit of supper and another 
glass. I remember, just as the war broke out, I 
was at one of the places to which I have already 
referred, the subject was the propriety of erect- 
ing on the rains of Turkey a united Greece. 
The Philhellenists came down in great force, 
and young Greeks, Sophocles and lonides, and 
many more screammg at the top of their voices, 
were there as well. What with the excitement 
of the subject and what with the excitement of 
the drink, the whole affair settled into a regular 
orgie, and the tumult of that night still rings 
w?ldly in my ear. Dumbiedikes would have 
stared at the gift of tongues exhibited on that 
occasion. 

If you admire pot-house oratory, then attend 
one of these places. The chair is generally 
taken about nine, and the proceedings close at 
twelve. A gentleman already agreed on com- 
mences the discussion, then the debate is left to 
c^ag its slow length along, sometimes giving 
lise to animated discussions, and at other times 
being a terrible failure. What is considered the 
treat of the evening is generally something of 
this sort — An indifferent speaker, perhaps a 
stranger, gets up and makes a short speech, 



128 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

which brings up one of the old seasoned debaters, 
great in his own eyes and in those of almost 
every one present. I assure you he is down upon 
the modest debutant in fine style, making mince- 
meat of his facts, and ridiculing his logic. The 
easier his work is, the more does he labour at it. 
The audience frantically applaud, and the orator, 
as he sits down, evidently thinks Brougham 
could not have slashed an opponent in better 
style. The gravity of these speakers is really 
amusing. Did they speak the language of mil- 
lions — did principles of eternal import dwell 
upon their tongue — did nations breathlessly wait 
for their decisions — did they shake the arsenal 
and fulmine over Greece — they could not set 
about their work in a more determined manner. 
And Jones, from his tremendous castigation of 
Palmerston, or fierce diatribe against Lord John, 
will sneak off quietly to his back garret in Pen- 
ton ville, just as we can. imagine Diocletian aban- 
doning an empire to plant cabbages at Salone. 
It is clear some of the speakers are naturally 
good orators; but the regular stagers have a 
seedy appearance, and that peculiar redness of 
the nose or soddenness of the skin which indicates 
the drinker ; and if you go much, you will find 



DISCUSSION CLUBS. 129 

a paper with five-shilling subscriptions, and you 
will be asked to give your name, for the benefit 
of some prominent debater whose affairs do not 
seem to have prospered, in spite of their master's 
matchless powers of oratory. The truth is, the 
money has been spent here in drink that was 
required elsewhere, and wife and children have 
starved at home while the orator was declaiming 
against Despotism abroad. I fear the only class 
benefited by these discussions are the landlords, 
who point to their door and whisper in your 
ears, Admission gratis. Yes, that is true ; but 
the egress, ah, there's the rub ! It is that for 
which you must pay, and pay handsomely, too, 
as hundreds of poor fellows have found to their 
tost. 



THE CYDER CELLARS. 

In the days of the gay and graceless Charles, 
Bow-street was the Bond-street of London. In 
the taverns of that quarter were the true homes 
and haunts of the British poets. That they 
were much better for all their drinking and 
worship of the small hours, I more than doubt. 
Pope tried the place, but found it killing, and 
had the wisdom to go and live at Twickenham, 
and cease to play the part of a man about town. 
Describing Addison's life at this period, he says, 
" He usually studied all the morning, then met 
his party at Button's, and dined there, and 
stayed there five or six hours, and sometimes far 
into the night. I was of the company for about 
a year, but found it too much for me. / hart 
my health, and so I quitted it" But the wits 
died off, and Tom's, Will's, Button's became de- 
solate, and in their place the Cyder Cellars grew 
famous. 

You know Maiden-lane, where an old hair- 



THE CYDER CELLARS. 131 

dresser had a son bom to him, who, under the 
name of Turner, won his way to the first rank 
amongst English painters, — where Voltaire, " so 
witty, profligate, and thin," lodged at the house 
of a French peruke-maker, and corresponded 
with Swift, and Pope, and the other literary men 
of the times, — where Fielding laid the founda- 
tion of an eternal fame, — where Andrew Marvell 
refused courtly bribes, and in sublime poverty 
proudly picked his mutton-bone : there, some 
long time since, stood a mansion, the residence, 
in a green old age, of that Nell Gwynne of 
whom, with a strange perversity, the world 
speaks as kindly as if she were a Grace Darling, 
or a Florence Nightingale, or a Margaret Ful- 
ler, or an Elizabeth Fry. A portion of the old 
house still remains, with its ancient wainscot- 
ting. Well, on the site of this mansion was, 
and is, the Cyder Cellars, the oldest house of its 
class in London, actually referred to in a rare 
pamphlet now extant in the British Museum, 
entitled " Adventures Under-ground in the Year 
1750/' In those days to drink deep was deemed 
a virtue, and the literary class, after the exhaust- 
ing labours of the day, loved nothing better 
than to sit soaking all night in the Cyder Cel- 
k2 



132 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

lars, where all restraints were thrown on one 
side, — where the song was sung and the wine 
was quaffed, and men were fools enough to think 
they were getting happy when they were only 
getting drunk. I can understand why the wits 
went to the Cyder Cellars then. Few of them 
lived in a style in which they would like to re- 
ceive their friends. In a place like the Cyder 
Cellars they could meet after the theatres were 
closed, and the occupations of the day over, 
and sup and talk and drink with more freedom 
than in any private house ; and no doubt many 
were the ingenuous youths who went to the 
Cyder Cellars to see the learned Mr. Bayle, or 
the great Grecian Porson, or the eminent trage- 
dian Mr. Edmund Kean, and thought it a fine 
thing to view those distinguished men maudlin, 
or obscene, or blasphemous, over their cups. 
But the wits do not go to the Cyder Cellars 
now. Even the men about town do not go there 
much. I remember when that dismal song, 
"Sam Hall/' was sung — a song in which a 
wretch is supposed to utter all the wretchedness 
in his soul, all his sickness of life, all his abhor- 
rence of mankind, as he was on his way to 
Tyburn drop. Horrible as the song was — revolt- 



THE CYDER CELLARS. 133 

ingots it was to all but blaze men, the room was 
crammed to suffocation, — it was impossible often 
to get a seat, and you might have heard a pin 
drop. Where are the crowds that listened to 
that song ? My own companion — where is he ? 
A finer young man, with richer promise, I knew 
not. He had a generous disposition, a taste for 
study, and was blessed with the constitution of 
a horse ; he had received a liberal education ; 
his morals had been carefully attended to ; his 
parents were people of large property, and this 
son I always deemed his mother's favourite son ; 
and now in his very prime, when he might have 
been a blessing to society, when in his success- 
ful professional career his parents might have 
reaped a reward, when the heart of some loving, 
tender, trusting woman might have joyed in his 
love, when fair young children, calling him 
father, might have clustered round his knees, he 
is dying, I am told, before their very eyes, 
slowly, and with agony, from the terrible effects 
of drink. And does it not really seem as if there 
were a curse attaching to those connected with 
the trade ? A week or two since, had you been 
passing down Bridges-street into the Strand, late 
on a Saturday night or early on a Sunday 



134 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

morning, on a door-step, in spite of the pouring 
rain, you might have seen a woman, in her rags 
and loneliness, trying to gather a few hours of 
sleep. She was too weak to pursue her unhal- 
lowed calling, and had she been so disposed on 
that cold, wet night, it would have been of little 
avail had she walked the streets. The police- 
man as he goes his monotonous rounds tells her 
to move on. She wakes up, gets upon her legs, 
hobbles along, and then, when he is past, again, 
weary and wayworn, seeks the friendly door-step. 
The policeman returns ; " What, here still ? " he 
exclaims. Ah yes ! she has not power to move 
away. She is weak, ill, dying. The friendly 
police carry her to the neighbouring hospital. 
"She cannot be received here," says Routine, 
and she is taken to the workhouse. Again she 
is taken to the hospital, admitted at last — for is 
she not a woman, and a young one, too ? — not 
more than twenty-five, it appears, — and on her 
face, stained with intemperance and sin, there is 
the dread stamp of death — in this case, perhaps, 
a welcome messenger ; for who would live, fall- 
en, friendless, forsaken, with a diseased body 
and a broken heart ? " The spirit of a man can 
sustain his infirmity ; but a wounded spirit who 



THE CYDER CELLARS. 135 

can bear ?" Peace be with her ! in another hour 
or two she will have done with this wretched 
life of hers, and have gone where "the wicked 
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 
More than usual official cruelty is visible in this 
case, for all that is given her between her ad- 
mission and her death is a simple cup of tea ; 
and the coroner's verdict very properly censures 
the hospital authorities. Well, what connexion, 
you ask, is there with this girPs sad fate and 
the jollity of the Cyder Cellars ? Only this, that 
her father made the Cyder Cellars so popular a 
place of resort. If I go there again I shall 
think of Louisa Regan, who began life as the 
daughter of a successful publican, who had been 
a governess in a nobleman's family, at the early 
age of twenty-five rescued from the streets by 
policemen, and dependent on charity for a bed 
on which to die. In the foaming cup, in the 
glitter of the gas, while the comic singer was 
most comical, or the sentimental singer most 
sentimental, I could not be oblivious of her fate. 
Is there not poison in the bowl ? Is there not 
madness in the merriment? To the night so 
bright does there not come ajlolorous morrow ? 
You may sing and laugh the hours away in the 



136 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Cyder Cellars for a while, but you must pay 
your reckoning, and then, I imagine, you will 
doubt whether the amusement was worth the 
price. Youth generally pays too dear for its 
whistle. Youth is finding this out ; at any rate 
the days of the Cyder Cellars are numbered, and 
now, with its Judge and Jury and Poses Plas- 
tiques, it collects comparatively few. 

Let me ask, need the amusements of our leisure 
hours be thus based on false principles ? Cam- 
bridge, in one of the pleasantest papers in the 
"World," says, "Among the numbers who have 
changed a sober plan of living for one of riot and 
excess, the greater part have been converted by 
the arguments in a drinking song." Life is real, 
life is earnest. It is a battle-ground which re- 
quires heart and muscle, and where only the 
brave can conquer ; but if I drop for half-an- 
hour into a music hall, I learn that pleasure is 
the great aim of life, and that gin can make me 
jolly and a genius. 



LEICESTER-SQUARE. 

One of the peculiar institutions of the country- 
is the square. Charles Knight says : — " The 
Piazza, Place, Platz, of Italy, France, or Ger- 
many, have little in common with it. Its ele- 
ments are simple enough — an open space of 
a square figure, houses on each of the four sides, 
and an enclosed centre with turf, a few trees, 
and, it may be, flowers ; and there is a square." 
There are fashionable squares, all alive with the 
sound of carriage-wheels and the chaste accents 
of a thousand flunkeys ; there are city squares, 
dull, dark places, with old red-brick houses, and 
a stunted, smoke-dried shrub or two in the 
middle. Then there are respectable squares, 
which never were fashionable, nor ever aimed to 
be such ; and then there are squares which were 
once fashionable, but now are sadly gone out of 
repute. One of the chief of these is Leicester- 
square. Do our readers remember how Queen 
Caroline found time to be the mother of seven 



138 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

promising children, of whom the eldest, Fred- 
erick, Prince of Wales, was a continual source of 
sorrow and vexation to both his parents ? " He 
resembled," writes Horace Walpole, with his 
usual sneer, " the Black Prince only in dying 
before his father." Well, there was a house 
built before the Commonwealth, called Leices- 
ter-house. Hither came this young, dissipated, 
short-lived Prince, and fixed his court. When 
he passed away, and the wits wrote — 

" Here lies Fred, 
Who was alive, 
And is dead," 

still the place had the prestige of fashion. It 
gradually assumed the shape of a square, and 
became the dwelling-place of men truly great. 
Sir Isaac Newton resided near the square, in a 
house yet standing, and known to fast men as 
Bertolini's, alias the Newton Hotel. Where 
now we see the Sabloniere Hotel, Hogarth once 
dwelt, and at a later time Sir Joshua Eeynolds 
lived on the opposite side of the square. In its 
neighbourhood Sir Charles Bell made his dis- 
coveries respecting the nervous system, and here 
the renowned John Hunter lived. In later 
times Wordsworth made it the scene of his 



LEICESTER-SQUARE. 139 

Moon- gazers ; and if he could term it " Leices- 
ter's busy square," still more is that epithet ap- 
propriate to it at the present time. It is true 
that the Great Globe is not a success ; that the 
Panopticon failed ; that the Western Literary 
Institution did not flourish ; that the place is 
not literary or scientific, nor even business-like, 
for by daylight the shops look seedy, and the 
wares exhibited are somewhat of the cheapest. 
But at night a change comes over the spirit of 
its dream. Here, from cheap lodging-houses 
hard by, from cold garrets or dark and dusty 
two-pair backs, crawl out to walk its flagstones, 
or taint its air with the smoke of cheap cigars, 
men of all nations and tongues — French, Ger- 
mans, Italians, Spaniards, Poles — the scoundrels 
and patriots of Europe. There is business here 
now ; the air is laden with the sickly odour of a 
thousand dinners. Hotels and cafes and res- 
taurants are lit up and gay. Mr. Smith opens 
the Alhambra on week-days for Music for 
the Million ; and women, rouged and dressed 
as much as possible like the nude figures, 
degrade our conceptions of Venus, and Sappho, 
and the Syrens, and others of our classic ac- 
quaintances, by the exhibition of them in ques- 



140 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

tionable groupings tolerated as poses plastiques. , 
Wine-shades attract us ; we hear the clink of 
billiards. This house we know to be a betting 
house — that to be a hell. A man runs up 
against us. He turns round and apologizes. 
I catch a glimpse of his face. I see at once that 
he is a billiard-room shark. Look at his pale 
face, his cold eye, his hard mouth; and don't 
play with him, however civil. Above all, don't 
imagine from his exterior that he is a gentle- 
man. A gentleman does not wear slop-shop 
clothes nor mosaic gold. 

You wish to sit down. Well, as it is past the 
midnight hour, we will go into this Cafe Chan- 
sante. At any rate the foreigners have more 
taste than ourselves. The pretty young girls, 
Trench or German, at the bar give the place a 
pleasant appearance, and the mirrors on all sides 
reflect the gay forms and faces here assembled. 
But we pass into the concert-room, where some 
Spanish minstrels in national costumes are sing- 
ing national airs. As you are not musical and 
cannot understand these distinguished foreigners, 
let us see who are here, the Swiss Kellner, with 
his wonted civility, having first brought us a cup 
of coffee and a cigar. I do n't know why it is 



LEICESTER-SQUARE. 141 

so, but it always struck me that of all asses the 
English ass is the greatest. How conspicuous, 
for instance, are those three young fellows sit- 
ting at the small marble table in front of us* 
Most likely they are medical students. Of course 
they are drinking and smoking, and have female 
companions, respecting whose character there 
can be no doubt. How happy are they in their 
conceit — in their insolent laugh at the foreigners 
round them — in their vulgar shouts of derisive 
applause. Talk to them, and you will be astonish- 
ed to find how morally dead they are, how nar- 
row is their range of thought, how obsolete are 
all their ideas, how suppressed are all their sym- 
pathies ; not even the beer they" drink can be 
heavier. Yet these lads are to teach the next 
age its medical science — and in the last death- 
struggle, when we would save the life we love, 
with broken hearts and streaming eyes we shall 
appeal to them in vain. In England the general 
practitioner will always be under-bred so long 
as the night-house and the casino absorb the 
hours science imperiously claims. But pass on to 
this next table. Look at this girl all radiant 
with beauty and smiles — beautiful even in spite 
of her long-lost virtue and life of sin. For, 



142 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

" You may break, you may ruin, the vase if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 

The man seated by her side is in love with 
her. It may be for her love he has given up 
mother, sister, betrothed, home, his fair name, 
his prospects in life, his hopes of heaven ; and 
she no more heeds his passionate vows than does 
the rock the murmur of the waves at its feet ; 
and already her wanton eye glances round the 
room for other victims to sacrifice to her vanity 
and pride. Oh, the deceit and craft and hard- 
ness of women such as she ! And yet on account 
of such in distant village-homes there is sadness, 
and the mother and sister deny themselves many 
a luxury, and grayhaired fathers mourn over 
their lost and loved — their Benjamins — born and 
nurtured to come to such an end. Perhaps at 
the next table the picture is reversed ; that 
woman is beautiful, and her face has a smile, 
and there is a flush upon her cheek, and the 
wine has driven from her heart for a while bitter 
memories ; but she is not happy, though loud be 
lier laugh ; and if she dared to sit and think of 
the hour when she fell, and of the mire and dirt 
along which she has crawled, of what she is now 
in her rustling silks, and what she was in her pea- 



LEICESTER-SQUARE. 143 

sant dress then — eyes full of grief, and dim with, 
tears, would look into her own ; and out of that 
gilded room, and away from all the song and 
laughter and wine, would she not rush home to 
die ? Yet if she now sells herself to pay to- 
morrow's baker's bill, is she to be trod on by the 
high-born beauty that goes up to God's altar 
with one for whom she has no love, for an estab- 
lishment that will make her bridesmaids yellow 
with well-bred jealousy? But we are all gay 
here. Is not the room light and cheerful ? Is 
not the whole aspect all mirth-inspiring ? Does 
not dull care flee the flowing bowl ? Jolly fel- 
lows are sitting and telling each other tales which 
you would be sorry your sister should hear, and 
which no mother would believe would be ever 
heard by son of hers without a manly protest. 
Women are laughing and drinking as if theirs 
were not lives of shame. Sated men about town 
languidly smoke, and the eye of the gloomy re- 
fugee sparkles, and his heart beats quicker, as he 
hears the song of his father-land. The hours 
hasten on — the company depart — the wanton 
beauty, flushed with conquest, rides off in the 
Hansom, or it may be in her private brougham, 
to her luxurious rooms ; while her sister, shiver- 



144 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

ing in the cold night, begs us for two-pence 
with which to purchase a bed of straw. Poor 
forlorn one ! in another year thou wilt lie down 
in another bed, only to wake up when the last 
trump shall sound ! 



DE. JOHNSON'S TAVEEN. 

Leigh Hint, Barry Cornwall, and the Times 
are all eloquent in the praise of alcohol. It lifts 
us above this dull earthy it fires our genius, it 
gives to us the large utterances of the gods. 
Barry Cornwall tells us — 

" Bad are the times 
And bad the rhymes 
That scorn old wine." 

Leigh Hunt translates " Bacchus in Tuscany," 
and sanctions such lines as the following — 

" I would sooner take to poison 
Than a single cup set eyes on 
Of that bitter and guilty stuff ye 
Talk of by the name of coffee ; " 

and the Times everywhere inculcates the idea 
that, without wine, poetry and eloquence and 
wit were dumb and dead. Was Sidney Smith 
witty ? was Shelly a poet ? or was he who in old 
times drew away the Hebrew multitude from the 
crowded streets of Jerusalem out into the desert, 



146 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

whose food was locusts and wild honey, whose 
raiment was a leathern girdle — was he not elo- 
quent, as he warned the terror-stricken mob 
that hung upon his lips of the wrath to come ? 
Facts are not in favour of the wine-drinkers. 
Of Waller Dr. Johnson writes, " In a time 
when fancy and gaiety were the most powerful 
recommendations to regard, it is not likely that 
"Waller was forgotten. He passed his time in 
the company that was highest both in rank and 
wit, from which even his obstinate sobriety did 
not exclude him. Though he drank water, he 
was enabled by his fertility of mind to heighten 
the mirth of Bacchanalian assemblies ; and Mr. 
Saville said that ' no man in England should 
keep him company without drinking, but Ned 
Waller. 5 " " In Parliament," says Burnet, " he 
was the delight of the House, and, though old, 
said the liveliest things of any of them." The 
truth is, men have often reserved the outpour- 
ings of their mind for the social glass, and have 
fallen into the natural mistake of believing that 
it was the glass, and not the opportunity and 
the action of mind upon mind, that elicited a 
certain amount of joyous fun. I must quote an 
anecdote from Sir Walter Scott's Life to illus- 



dr. Johnson's tavern. 147 

irate my meaning. He tells us one of his 
school-fellows was always at the top of the class. 
Young Scott found that when asked a question 
the lad alluded to was in the habit of fumbling 
one peculiar button. Scott cut off that button. 
The next time the poor fellow was asked a ques- 
tion, as usual he put his hand to fumble the 
friendly button — alas ! it was gone, and with it 
his power, and he speedily lost his place. The 
writers I have quoted, to be consistent^ should 
argue it was the button that made that lad sharp 
and clever. 

But if you still doubt, let us test the thing 
practically. In Bolt-court, Fleet-street, there 
is a tavern bearing the honoured name of Dr. 
Johnson. Dr. Johnson lived in this court, and 
hence, I suppose, the sign ; but the Doctor was 
a total abstainer. He found he could not be a 
moderate drinker, so he verily gave up the drink 
altogether. He told that precious ass, Boswell, 
to drink w r ater, because if he did that he would 
be sure not to get drunk, whereas if he drank 
wine he was not so sure ; and Boswell, to whom 
the idea seems never to have occurred, prints the 
remark as an astonishing instance of his hero's 
sagacity. But I pass on to modern times. In 
L 2 



148 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

this Dr. Johnson's Tavern is situated " The City 
Concert Room." I suppose the City does not 
care much about concerts, as I have generally 
found it very thinly attended. It is a handsome 
room, and perhaps there are about fifty or sixty 
gentlemen, chiefly young ones, present. You do 
not see swells here, as at Evans's. They are all 
very plain- looking people, from the neighbour- 
ing shops, or from the warehouses in Cheapside. 
Just by me are three pale, heavy-looking young 
men, whose intellects seem to me dead, except so 
far as a low cunning indicates a sharpness where 
money is concerned. One of them is stupidly 
beery. Their great object is to get him to drink 
more, notwithstanding his repeated assurances, 
uttered, however, in a very husky tone, that he 
must go back to " Islington " to-night. A lady 
at one end of the room, with a very handsome 
blue satin dress and a very powerful voice, is 
screaming outsomething about "Lovely Spring," 
but this little party is evidently indifferent to 
the charms of the song. Just beyond me is 
a gent with a short pipe and a very stiff collar. 
I watch him for an hour, and whether he is en- 
joying himself intensely, or whether he is endur- 
ing an indescribable amount of inward agony, I 



DR. JOHNSON'S TAVERN. 149 

cannot tell. AUittle further off is another gent 
with a very red jscarf, equally stoical in appear- 
ance. Behind me are two verdant youths, of 
limited means I imagine ; but they have the 
pleasure of speaking to the comic singer, and 
take tickets for that interesting gentleman's 
benefit. But the comic singer comes forward, 
and sings with appropriate action of the doings 
of a little insect very partial to comfortable 
quarters. That song I have known fifteen years. 
I have heard Sharp sing it, Ross sing it, Cowell 
sing it. Night after night in some drinking 
room in some part of London or other is a beery 
audience told — 

" Creeping where no life doth be, 
A rare old plant is the lively flea." 

And after a pursuit very vividly pantomimed, 
the little stranger is suffered to be caught, and 
to tell the catcher that it is his father's ghost, 
doomed for a season to walk the earth and nip 
him most infernally, and so on. Now I am sure 
that every one in the room has heard this 
dozens of times before, yet old men are laughing 
as if it was an absolute novelty. Talk about 
alcohol brightening men's intellects ! When I 
come to such places as this, it always seems 



150 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

to me to have a precisely contrary effect. Men 
could not sit and hear all these stale witticisms 
unless they drank. Sober, I am sure they could 
not do it, not even if they were paid for it ; and 
yet all seem enraptured. I remark, however, 
one exception. Two waiters help to a seat by 
my side a very dirty little man with red eyes, 
and generally shabby appearance. The waiters 
set down by him a glass of grog, offer him a 
cigar, and then playfully shaking their fingers 
at him, as if to intimate he had better be quiet, 
leave him to his fate. After a few minutes of 
deep thought, he looks to me and beckons. I 
take no notice. He repeats the signal. I lean 
forward. 

" Very o-old, sir." 

" What do you mean ? " we ask. 

" The comic singer very o-old, sir/' 

We intimate as much, 

" But get him on a fresh piece, sir, and see 
how he can go-o." Here our friend began roll- 
ing one arm rapidly round the other, to give us 
an idea of the comic singer's powers. 

" Pity he do n't give something new," repeats 
our friend. Another assenting nod on our part 
and the conversation ceases. But we suppose it 



DR. JOHXSOX'S TAVERX. 151 

is with, comic singers as with others. " A man 
who has settled his opinions does not love to have 
the tranquillity of his convictions disturbed/ 9 
wrote Dr. Johnson, and a comic singer does not 
like to have the bother of learning fresh songs. 
But the comic singer was applauded and en- 
cored, and then he treated us to a monologue, in 
which he describes how he, the drunken husband, 
stays out all night, and makes it up with his 
" old ooman" when he gets home ; and in the 
course of his remarks of course he declares teeto- 
talism is humbug, that there was truth in wine, 
but he 'd be blessed if there was any in water ; 
that the man who would drink the latter would 
be a muddy cistern — forgetting all the while the 
tu quoqae the water-drinkers would very fairly 
urge, on the authority even of Mr. Henry 
Drummond; and then I came away, thinking 
that if drinking made men witty and light- 
hearted, I had been very unfortunate on the 
night of my visit. Once upon a time, -as the 
writer was in the Cave of Harmony, the polite 
manager asked him his opinion of a new comic 
singer. Having given it, the red-faced little 
man turned to us with a sigh, and said, " Ah, 
sir, you have no idea what a dearth there is 



152 THE NIGHT SIDE OE LONDON. 

of comic talent now-a-days." And truly lie was 
right. There is little fun and comedy and wit 
anywhere. I know not where they are ; I know 
where they are not. You will not find them in 
the taverns where men sit all the evening listen- 
ing to music for which they do not care, and 
drinking all the while. How should there be, 
since wine is now admitted to be the product of 
the laboratory, not of the grape ? 



THE SPORTING PUBLIC-HOUSE 

Was instituted for the combined purpose of en- 
couraging drinking, and what its admirers term 
the noble art of self-defence. There'was a time 
when boxing was in fashion ; when but few of 
our noblemen and gentlemen did not take 
lessons in the pugilistic art. " I can assert, 
without fear of contradiction/' writes Pierce 
Egan, " that I furnished the present Duke of 
Buccleuch with a pair of boxing-gloves and all 
the volumes of ' Boxiana ' during his studies 
at Eton College." Prince George of Cam- 
bridge learnt the rudiments of the art from 
young Richmond ; the late Duke of Portland 
was a pupil of that Jackson whose name is fa- 
miliar to all readers of Byron. At the first pub- 
lic dinner of the Pugislistic Society, held at 
the Thatched House Tavern, 1814, a baronet, Sir 
Henry Smith, was in the chair ; and it is a fact, 
when the war with France was terminated, and 
ttfe Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, 



154 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

accompanied by Blucher and Platoff, visited this 
country, that not anything they had witnessed 
appeared to interest them more than the spar- 
ring matches between Jackson, Tom Crib, Bel- 
cher, Old Dutch Sam, at a dejeuner given by 
Lord Lowther at his mansion. Indeed, so de- 
lighted were those great masters of the art of 
war with the combats between those first-rate 
boxers, that Messrs. Blucher and Platoff had a 
second exhibition by their own express desire at 
the Earl of Elgin's house. Actually even in the 
House of Commons Mr. Wyndham favoured the 
House with a description, warm and glowing, of 
a recent contest between Richmond and Madox, 
of which he had been a spectator ; and it is not 
long since Mr. Gully, a prize-fighter, represented 
Pontefract. The late George IV., when Prince 
of Wales, was also a spectator at the fight upon 
a stage on Brighton Downs between Tom Tyne, 
a distinguished boxer, with a publican of milling 
notoriety. The latter was killed by a blow on 
his temple, and died almost upon the instant. 
The royal debauchee never attended another, 
but his brother, the late William the Fourth, 
was often a spectator of the matches on Mousley 
Hurst. In this respect the age has made pro- 



THE SPORTING PUBLIC-HOUSE. 155 

gress. Our noblemen no longer patronize the 
prize-ring. Our young princes have a purer 
taste. Yet the institution, with all its brutality 
and blackguardism, still exists, and in the Ad- 
vertiser, side by side with an article bewailing 
the spread of German neology in our dissenting 
colleges, or speaking evil of such earnest workers 
in the wide field of philanthropy as Maurice or 
Kingsley, you will read of one of the beastly 
prize-fights which still disgrace the land. But 
the Advertiser is the publicans' paper, and it is 
a fact easily understood, that the prize-fighter, 
when his day is over, generally keeps a public- 
house, which is generally called a sporting- 
house. A warm admirer of them writes, " Fun, 
civility, mirth, good-humour, and sporting 
events are the general theme of conversation to 
be met with over a cheerful glass at the above 
houses." Ben Caunt's, in St. Martin's-lane, is 
perhaps the principal one, but there are some 
five or six besides in various parts of the metro- 
polis. Let us enter one. In spite of the assur- 
ance of civility and good humour, I don't 
think you will stay long, but will feel on a 
small scale what Daniel must have felt in the 
lions' den. 



156 L THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

We enter, we will say, Bang Up's hostelry, 
about ten on a Thursday evening ; there is Bang 
Up at the bar, with his ton of flesh and broken 
nose. Many people think it worth while to go 
and spend one or two shillings at Bang Up's 
bar, merely that they may have the pleasure of 
seeing him, and consider him cheap at the 
money. I don't admire their taste. I once 
spent an evening with the Norfolk Giant, and 
I did not find him very witty or well-informed. 
But let us walk up-stairs, having first paid six- 
pence to a doorkeeper, by appearance a negro, 
for which we are to receive a certain amount of 
refreshment, if beer and grog come rightly 
under that denomination; at length we find 
ourselves in a very ordinary room, with very 
extraordinary people in it. First, there are the 
portraits — imprimis Bang Up, looking grosser 
and more animal than ever. Secondly, Mrs 
Bang Up, the exact counterpart of her bosom's 
lord ; then a tribe of Bang Ups junior, of all 
sizes and sexes, attract our astonished eyes. 
Then — for the room is a complete "Walhalla — we 
have portraits of sporting heroes innumerable, 
with villanous foreheads, all "vacant of our 
glorious gains," heavy eyes, thick bull necks, 



THE SPORTING PUBLIC-HOUSE. 157 

and very short croppy hair. Here Gully van- 
quishes Bob Gregson, "the Lancashire cham- 
pion," one of the finest and most formidable 
men of the day. There Jack Eandall and Used 
Turner display " a fine science and capital fight- 
ing/ 5 almost unparalleled, and so on ; for the list 
is long, and it is one we do not care to repeat. 
We seat ourselves at the further end of the 
room, with a few gentlemen drinking gin and 
smoking cigars. Twenty or thirty mean-look- 
ing men are seated along the side ; they are 
mostly dirty, and have broken noses ; they are 
not very conversational, but seem chiefly to be 
deeply engaged in smoking. At length the 
waiter brings out some boxing-gloves ; one man 
takes off his coat and waistcoat, possibly his 
shirt, and puts them on ; another does the same 
— they stand up to each other, the gents at the 
table encourage them, and the seedy men with 
broken noses look on very knowingly ; they spar 
for some time, till the one feels that he cannot 
touch the other, and throws down the gloves ; a 
small collection is then made for the noble art of 
self-defence, which, I presume,isdivided amongst 
the performers ; other actors come upon the 
stage, and the friendly contests are maintained 



158 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

till Bang Up closes his public-house for the 
night. As I came out, it was a great consolation 
to me to think that there are not many such 
places in London. The style of men thus cre- 
ated are, I fear, neither useful nor ornamental. 
They have a nasty ticket-of-leave look, and I 
would fain dispense with their company in quiet 
back streets during the small hours. One other 
thought may console you ; the sporting public- 
house, once popular, now attracts but a few, and 
that few a weak and vicious class. Is not this 
matter of encouragement ? 



THE PUBLIC-HOUSE WITH A 
BILLIARD-ROOM 

Is a great attraction in some places. We knew 
a whole town upset by the fact that the landlord 
of the "Swan" had fitted up a billiard-room. 
I and Wiggins and Foley and Jobson spent at 
one time, I regret to say, a good deal of time 
there. I am warning the reader against the 
follies of my youth ; but Foley failed, and Job- 
son and Wiggins, after having had their debts 
paid three or four times by their friends, I be- 
lieve are now following that eminently healthy 
occupation called gold-digging, somewhere in 
Australia. Then I think of that little town in 
South Wales, and of the "Angel," under w r hose 
too hospitable roof we used to meet. One of us 
was an M.P.'s son; he is now, I believe, drag- 
ging down a father's gray hairs with sorrow to 
the grave. Another of us bore a name dear to 
every Englishman ; he, I believe, is pensioned 
off by his family, and lives as he can on the 



160 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

handsome allowance of a guinea a- week. But 
these London billiard-rooms are fifty times more 
pernicious. There are some five or six hundred 
connected with public-houses. There are in all 
our large thoroughfares separate rooms licensed 
for this game, but at these drinking often goes 
on. And thus the two excitements acting on 
the man, he is impelled downwards with an in- 
creasing power. I have seen in these rsoom 
coffiers and secretaries of public companies in a 
night losing, I am sure, a quarter's salary. I 
have seen young fellows completely ruined. 
There was not, when I first knew him, a more 
promising, gentlemanly young fellow than 
Smethwicke, and now, they tell me, he is in 
Marylebone Workhouse. 

We are told that men are grown-up children. 
This saying forcibly occurred to me the last time 
I was in a billiard-room. After I had recovered 
from the feeling of suffocation, which an atmo- 
sphere infected by gas and smoke had produced, 
I observed a number of men with long sticks 
trying to knock a number of various-coloured 
balls into any of the six pockets of the billiard- 
table. At each unsuccessful attempt a chorus 
of observations were made by the players, not 



PUBLIC-HOUSE WITH A BILLIARD-ROOM. 161 

remarkable for their novelty, for the vocabulary 
of the billiard-room is very limited, such as 
" Not within a mile" — " I did n't play for you, 
Bob"— " It smelt the hole," &c. &c. At each 
successful attempt the chorus was still more ani- 
mated, but not more original, as " Grood stroke," 
— " Bad flewke"— " On the red," &o. &c. The 
game that was being played was called " pool." 
A number of people put each 2s. or 3s., as they 
may choose to arrange it, and they have each a 
ball of a different colour — red, blue, pink, yellow, 
white, brown, black. Each player has what is 
called three lives, and each time he is put in by 
a player — for they play in turn — he pays six- 
pence or a shilling, according to arrangement, 
and loses a life, whilst the successful player is 
allowed to play again upon the ball which hap- 
pens to be nearest. The money in the pool is 
ultimately divided between the two players who 
have kept their three lives the longest. It will 
be seen that, if everything is straightforward, 
the best player has the best chance of dividing 
the pool or taking the lives. But, unhappily, 
this game, so child-like in appearance, is not 
always innocent. It may happen two players., 
gifted by nature with conveniently elastic con- 

31 



162 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

sciences, and a very confused notion of right and 
wrong, may arrange when they play upon each 
other to purposely avoid putting the ball in. Of 
course, each time this omission is made it is 
equal to the owner of the ball having an extra 
life, and of course makes the division of the pool 
almost a certainty. Perhaps at the end of the 
evening the two gentlemen, " who merely play 
for their amusement/' may be seen under a lamp- 
post dividing the spoil. The other games are 
pyramids and billiards, which it is unnecessary 
to describe. I will simply remark that the best 
player should win the game ; but this is not 
always the case. Alas ! for human nature ! 
Sharps lose to win, muffs win to lose (the term 
" muff" is applied to an indifferent player). 
After this not very flattering description the 
reader would doubtless like to know who fre- 
quent these places. A very large majority are 
gentlemen — men who are perfectly incapable of 
doing anything but what is strictly honest ; the 
minority are billiard sharks. The gentlemen 
play because it is a source of excitement ; the 
sharks, because it is a source of profit. There 
are also some who play only for amusement with 
gentlemen like themselves, and never risk be- 



PUBLIC-HOUSE WITH A BILLIARD-ROOM. 163 

yond a shilling or so ; and others, mere lookers- 
on, who, fatigued by their daily labours, prefer 
a dolcefar niente to the trouble of theatres, &c, 
and who read the paper, drink their brandy- and- 
water, and smoke their cigar, without either 
playing or making a bet. 

It is not easier to distinguish a gentleman in 
a billiard-room than elsewhere, but without 
wishing to be personal, it is desirable the stran- 
ger should keep at a distance those individuals 
who are so very familiar and friendly with every 
one, and who keep a piece of chalk in their waist- 
coat pocket. These people cannot be insulted ; 
they carefully avoid squabbles, which may bring 
about disagreeable insinuations ; they prefer pur- 
suing the even tenor of their way, " picking up" 
as many people as they can. See yonder old 
man who totters across the room ; his trade is 
swindling, his goods are lies, his recreation is 
obscenity and blasphemy ; his palsied hand can 
scarcely grasp a cue, and yet there are few who 
can excel him ; by concealing his game carefully 
he has won, and can win hundreds, from his 
victims, who, thinking nothing of his skill, are 
astonished, as he pretends to be himself, at his 
luck. The young wife tossing restlessly in her 
M 2 



164 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

bed, and wondering what can keep her lord so 
long at business, little knows, when he returns 
home flushed and excited, that he has been 
fleeced of money he can ill afford to lose ; whilst 
the sharer of the domestic joys of the billiard 
shark basks in the sunshine of his momentary 
good humour, as he displays with a sardonic 
smile the gold which perhaps never belonged 
to the dupe who lost it. But the night is clos- 
ing on us ; we have seen enough for once. Come 
away. 



THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE 

Is situated in one of the leading thorough- 
fares, and is decorated in an exceedingly hand- 
some manner. The furniture is all new and 
beautifully polished, the seats are generally ex- 
quisitely soft and covered with crimson velvet, 
the walls are ornamented with pictures and pier- 
glasses, and the ceiling is adorned in a manner 
costly and rare. Such places as Simpson's or 
Campbell's in Beak-street, or Nell Grwynn's, 
almost rival the clubs, and, indeed, are much 
smarter than anything they can show at the 
Milton. Time was when men were partial to the 
sanded floor, the plain furniture, the homely 
style of such places as Dolly's, the London 
Coffee-house, or the Cock, to which Tennyson 
has lent the glory of his name. Now the love of 
show is cultivated to an alarming extent. " Let 
us be genteel or die,' 5 said Mrs Nickleby, and 
her spirit surrounds us everywhere. Hence the 
splendour of the drinking-rooms of the metropo- 



166 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

lis, and the studied deportment of the waiters, 
and the subdued awe with which Young Norvals 
fresh from the Grampian Hills and their fathers' 
flocks tread the costly carpets or sprawl their 
long legs beneath glittering mahogany. 

Let us suppose it is about nine or ten in the 
evening, and we step into one of the numerous- 
establishments which are to the respectable 
classes what the gin-palace and the beer-house 
is supposed to be to the class who are not. The 
reader must pardon my use of the word respect- 
able. It is a word which, from my heart, I 
abhor, and, as it is commonly employed, merely 
denotes that a man has an account at a bank. 
There are but two ways in which human actions 
can be contemplated — the worldly and the phi- 
losophical or Christian. I use the term respect- 
able merely in its worldly acceptation, but I skip 
this digression and pass on. Undoubtedly at the 
first blush it is a cheerful scene that first meets 
our eye. In this box are two or three old friends 
discussing a bottle of claret, who have not met 
perhaps since bright and boisterous boyhood, and 
who may never meet again. Of what manly 
struggle, of what sorrow that can never die, of 
what calm pleasures and chastened hopes, have 



THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE. 167 

they to tell ! No wonder that you see the tear 
glistening in the eye, though there is laughter on 
the lip. Pass on ; here are some bagsmen red 
with port, and redolent of slang. In the next 
box are three or four young fellows drinking 
whisky and smoking cigars, and of course their 
talk is of wine and women ; but there is hope, 
nevertheless, for woman is still to them a some- 
thing divine, and the evil days have not come 
when they see in her nothing but common clay. 
Look at this retired old gentleman of the old 
school sitting by himself alone ; yet is he not 
alone, for as he sips his port memories thicken in 
his brain, of ancient cronies now sleeping in 
churchyards far away, of a sainted wife no longer 
a denizen of this dark world of sin, of daughters 
with laughing children round their knees, all rosy 
and chubby and flaxen-haired, of sons with Anglo- 
Saxon energy and faith planting the old race on 
a new soil. Cross to this other side and look at 
these reckless, dissipated fellows, whom the waiter 
has just respectfully requested not to make so 
much noise, as it disturbs the other gentlemen in 
the room. Possibly they are Joint Stock Bank 
directors or railway officials, and after a few 
years it will be found that for their revelry to- 



168 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

night a deluded public will have to pay. Here 
are a host of city merchants discussing politics, 
and it is wonderful how common-place is their 
conversation under the influence of alcohol. 

" Palmerston is a great man, by — , he is a 
great man, sir," says one. " Yes, and no mis- 
take," is the reply. " There is no humbug 
about Palmerston," says another. And so they 
ring the changes, originating nothing, gaining 
nothing, only getting redder in the face and more 
indistinct in their pronunciation. At length 
they button over their great coats, pay their bills, 
and generally very good-naturedly, but very 
unsteadily, steer towards the door. It may be 
that a noisy discussion takes place. One man a 
little more gone than the rest disturbs the har- 
mony of the evening by his flat contradictions, 
uttered somewhat too rudely, and backed by a 
blow from the fist on the table, which breaks a 
couple of glasses. But next morning he apolo- 
gizes ; " It was only my wine contradicting your 
wine," he says, without any sense of shame. 
But this rarely happens. The respectable classes 
have more command of their temper, and do not 
get so idiotically drunk as the frequenters of low 
public-houses, and so the habitues are in no 



THE RESPECTABLE PUBLIC-HOUSE. 169 

hurry to move and leave the light and luxurious 
room for the muddy streets and the'winter night. 
But they must do so, and young men with their 
passions unnaturally stimulated, and the consci- 
ence proportionately deadened, are left to the 
temptations which await men who are out in the 
small hours ; and old fogies, believing that if 
they go to bed mellow, they live as they ought to 
live, and die jolly fellows, find their way to their 
respective dwelling-places in a state as lament- 
able as it is degrading. Yet next Sunday you 
will see these men at church, and hear them 
joining in solemn and contrite prayer. Do they 
think these purple faces tell no tales ? Do they 
think it is only the wife knows how they drink — 
in respectable company — in respectable hotels ? 
Do they forget that in the midst of their revelry, 
under the flaming chandeliers, peering over the 
shoulders of courteous waiters, listening to their 
vinous laughter and ancient jokes, Death, with 
his dart, is there ? Ay, and one night he will 
ride home with his victim in the Hansom, and 
will see him placed, all smelling with drink and 
under its influence, in the bed, side by side with 
his wife, and next morning she will as usual 
give her husband the seidlitz powder or soda- 



170 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

water, and leave him to sleep for a short while 
longer, and when she comes back will find that 
his is the sleep which knows no waking. And 
then the inquest will be held — and a medical 
man will perplex a plain case with useless show 
of knowledge, and a jury will return a verdict of 
" Death from natural causes/' You and I know 
better — you and I know that if the man had not 
gone into the respectable public-house he might 
have lived another ten years — that it was be- 
cause he went there night after night, and sat 
soaking there night after night, that the blood- 
vessels became gorged and clotted, and that the 
wonderful machine stood still. " Poisoned by 
alcohol" is the true verdict — by alcohol sold 
and consumed in the respectable public-house. 
How long will society sanction such places ? 
How long will they retard the progress of the 
nation by wasting energies, and time, and cash, 
and opportunities that might have been devoted 
to nobler ends ? How long with their splendour 
— with their gilding and glass — with their air of 
respectability and comfort, will they attract the 
unwary, ruin the weak, and slay the strong man 
in his strength and pride ? 



NIGHT-HOUSES. 

Plutarch begins one of those biographies 
which in all times have been the charm of 
childhood and age, by remarking that, " If 
things are implicated in a dependence upon 
definite numbers, it is a necessity that the same 
things must often happen, being effected by the 
same means." Thus is it, life in all its broad 
aspects is everywhere the same. All over the 
globe there is a wonderful uniformity in human 
habits. Men who work hard — as a rule — rise 
early and go to bed early. Night is the time 
for rest. So far at least there is harmony be- 
tween God's law and man's. The men and 
women who transgress are for the most part 
waifs and strays. Such are the denizens of our 
streets by night — such are they who crowd, not 
alone the night public-houses, but night coffee- 
houses of our metropolis. 

Here in London these houses are of all kinds. 
For instance, let us enter one in the Haymarket. 



172 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

The rooms are as smart as gilding and orna- 
mented paper and plate-glass can make them. 
The waiters are got up regardless of expense. 
The coffee is good, but dear. The men and 
women are of the kind usually met with in this 
locality during the small hours. The greater 
part are fools enough to think it worth while to 
buy a little worldly wisdom at a price — it may 
be at the loss of their bodies and souls — none 
but madmen would think of paying. In such 
places as these you are as sure to be injured as if 
you sat all night carousing in a public-house. 
These women with forced smiles on their painted 
cheeks are the veritable Harpies. Theirs is the 
true sardonic laugh. Do you remember one 
way in which that ancient phrase is accounted 
for ? Sardinia, it was said, was noted for a 
bitter herb which contracted the features of 
those who tasted it. Pausanias says it is a plant 
like parsley, which grows near springs, and 
causes people who eat it to laugh till they die ; 
and these women, have they not eaten a bitter 
plant, and do they not laugh and die ? Beware 
of the women. Beware of the men. See how 
their cunning eyes glisten if you change a 
sovereign. If they can get you into a neigh- 



NIGHT-HOUSES. 173 

bouring public-house and rob you, they will be 
rather pleased than otherwise. Look at that 
tall dark fellow watching us. It was only the 
other day he met a man here, as he might you 
or I, and decoyed him into a public-house close 
by, where his confederates were waiting, and 
robbed him of forty pounds when they thought 
their victim was sufficiently "fuddled" with 
champagne. He and such as he are not par- 
ticular who they rob. They do not spare the 
women, I assure you. 

Let us now turn towards Covent-garden. 
The debauchery of Oovent- garden is not what it 
was. Obscenity is banished from the Cave of 
Harmony, and better hours are kept ; but there 
are night coffee-houses about here, dirty, shabby 
places, patronised by dirty, shabby people. How 
weary and wayworn are the women ! They 
have been walking the streets for hours — they 
have been dancing in neighbouring saloons — 
they have paraded their meretricious charms, 
and here they sit, hungry, tired, sleepy, and 
'tis three o'clock in the morning. No home 
have they to go to but some wretched room for 
which they pay a sum equal to the entire rent 
of the house. There is little gaiety here ; the 



174 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

poor comic nigger, with his banjo and his 
double entendre playing with all his might, in 
the hope that some gent will stand a cup of 
coffee and a muffin, can scarce raise a laug-h. 
Timidly one asks, " Will you treat me to a cup 
of coffee, sir?" Yes, forlorn one. If your sin 
is great, so is your punishment ; once you might 
have been a dainty little wife, and now what 
are you ? I say it sorrowfully, the scum of the 
streets, garbage for drunken lust. 

Let us go a little further on, not into that 
house, there are only thieves and pickpockets 
there, and we might be bullied, which is not 
pleasant. Ah, here ? s the house we are looking 
for ; it has done a good trade this many a year, 
for is there not a cab-stand opposite, and cabby 
knows the value of a cup of coffee on a cold 
winter's night. Never mind the smell ; as bu- 
siness is carried on uninterruptedly during the 
twenty-four hours, and as the company belongs 
to that part of the population not guilty of an 
inordinate attachment to soap and water, and to 
whom cheap baths are a myth, it cannot be 
matter of surprise if there be about the place 
! *'an ancient and fish-like smell." But here 



NIGHT-HOUSES. 175 

comes the landlord. "Good morning, gents;" 
in an under voice, " you had better mind your 
pocket ; there are some strange characters here. 
A cup of coffee ? Yes, sir. Now then, sir, you 
had better wake up, it is time for you to be off. 
You've had a good hour's sleep." "Why not 
let him sleep?" "Why, you see, sir, such 
fellows would stay here all night and fill up the 
house, and not spend a penny ; and business 
is business." A curious medley is here of sleepy, 
half-tipsy, sickly unfortunates. Yet even here 
the line is drawn ; the door opens, and we dimly 
discern a mass of rags ; so does our landlord, as 
he rushes to exclude the would-be customer. 
" What, you are trying it on again, are you ? 
you know you can't come here. Why, you see, 
sir, if we let such fellows in, the place would 

swarm with ," (the reader must supply the 

blank). But we take the hint, and not unre- 
luctantly depart. 

The night public-house has, I confess, — and I 
am glad to do so, — lost somewhat of its popularity 
in latter years. At one time it was common 
ever) 7 where ; now it is in only a few streets that 
it exists and pollutes the atmosphere. In the 



176 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Strand, in the Haymarket, in Oxford-street, 
night-houses were numerous ; but the one to 
which I more immediately refer was situated in 
the neighbourhood of Tottenham-court-road. 
Since then, Mr Spurgeon has been preaching in 
that locality, but I dare say the night-house 
exists nevertheless. 

Let us suppose it is about two in the morning, 
and with the exception of one or two amiable 
garotters, a few sleepy police, and some three or 
four women, the regular population of the 
neighbourhood may be safely considered to have 
been long in bed. The gas-lamps shine almost 
exclusively on yourself. You look up at the 
windows and you see no lights save where, 
perhaps, poverty may be stitching for bread, or 
where Death may have come an unbidden guest 
and borne away the fairest and the best beloved. 
At this hour the young bride in all her beauty 
may be struck down in mortal agony, or the 
wee pet lamb, whose little silver laugh had 
so often dispelled the dark cloud that gathered 
round the home, or the grey-haired man, hav- 
ing just reached the goal, and achieved an 
independence, may find himself left in this 
bleak, dark, wide world alone. 



NIGHT- HOUSES. 177 

Leaves have their time to fall, 

And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 
And stars to set ; hut all — 

Thou hast all seasons for thine own, Death. 

And now let us forget all this, and knock at 
this door, above which streams a mellow light, 
and from which, we hear sounds of boisterous 
gaiety. Is it not open yet ? Then give anothe r 
rap. Ah, it is all right now. "Take care of 
your pockets," says Cerberus, in a low voice, — 
" there are some rum blokes here." We will, 
my friend. 

Yes, they must be rum blokes who come here 
into this filthy, stinking shop, and amongst this 
filthy, ragged, swearing crew of reprobates. If 
you wish to see a set of fellows whose mere looks 
would hang them^ I think they are about us 
now. Even the landlord seems uncomfortable 
in their presence, and wisely allows as little as 
possible of temptation in his house or on his per- 
son. He knows, I believe, they would as soon 
rob him as any one else, and his small ferrety 
eyes are evidently wide awake. Indeed, none of 
the party look as if they had much honest sleep, 
and in the daylight, I imagine, would present 
a somewhat seedy appearance. We generally 



178 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

think cabmen not scrupulously honest, but per- 
haps these cabmen, with ancient great coats and 
well muffled up, are the honestest fellows here. 
Then of course there is an Irish " widder," with 
melancholy face and a string of ballads, such as 
" Mary Blane," « The Red, White, and Blue/' 
" Cheer, boys, cheer/' all of which she is willing 
to dispose of on the most reasonable terms. A 
decayed swell, probably a railway director in 
the great year of bubbles, with extraordinary 
sponges — an article I should have thought quite 
as unsaleable as soap to the habitues, — and a 
jockey-like looking person with knives with 
most wonderful and unaccountable blades, or 
with some fancy work-boxes or other articles 
equally ingenious and useless. Women are here, 
of course, in the last stage of their profligate 
career, driven out of decent houses, unfit to as- 
sociate with the well-dressed and the young — 
wrinkled, repulsive, red. As you see them 
drink, quarrelling, screaming, and cursing, as 
they always do till turned out to go God knows 
where, can you imagine that the difference be- 
tween them and your own mother is merely that 
of circumstance, and education, and habit? — 
perhaps merely the difference produced by drink. 



NIGHT-HOUSES. 179 

I can tell you that little hag was once a rich 
man's leman, and robed herself in silk and satin, 
and quaffed her costly wine ; and now hark how 
piteously she begs a drop of gin, ere she staggers 
to her wretched garret and straw to dream of a 
youth and gaiety now no longer hers. Here she 
has warmth, light, and society, and the night- 
house exists for such as she ; and if, as is quite 
as likely as not, she is in league with some of 
the men around us, here she brings her victim, 
and then, stupified by drink, she has only to de- 
coy him down some dark passage, and he becomes 
an easy prey to the sneaking thief who comes 
skulking up behind. But let us listen — 

** Me and my pal we was a-going along the 
Hedgware-road, and we sor" — 

" Hold your tongue/' is the courteous reply. 

"What do you mean by making all this 
row ?" cries the landlord, with a horrid oath. 

" Now, then, old buffer, another quartern of 
gin." 

" And a screw of tobacco, master, if you 
please." 

" Well, old gal, what '11 you drink ? " 

" Well, I don't mind, what '11 you stand ?" 

" Suppose we has arf and arf ?" 

n2 



180 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

" Ay, to be sure" 

And so the hours pass, and the place gets 
hotter, and stinks more and more every hour, for 
the men and women have not a very pleasant 
effluvium, and the hubbub becomes more intense. 
You tell me you would rather not stay here long. 
"Well, I am quite of your opinion, for a couple 
of gentlemen with pale faces have been eyeing 
us most attentively ever since we have been here, 
and I confess their appearance is not prepos- 
sessing. Their short hair seems to indicate an 
acquaintance with one of the public establish- 
ments of the metropolis, with whose inmates it 
is not well to be too familiar. They are dressed 
in fustian, with thick boots well studded with 
nails, a kick from which on the head when a 
man is down would soon settle his business ; and 
with their close-fitting caps, Belcher handker- 
chiefs, and heavy animal faces, are certainly not 
very pleasant-looking young men. I should be 
sorry to intimate my suspicions to them, as they 
may be noblemen in disguise, and might feel 
hurt at my want of charity. In the mean while, 
as the door is being opened and the coast is clear, 
I avail myself of the opportunity, and leaving 
the night-house, am soon dreaming in my fever- 



NIGHT-HOUSES. 181 

ish slumber that I have just been garotted and 
left for dead at the door of my domestic estab- 
lishment, to the intense agony of my wife and 
children, — of course, by the two amiable young 
people aforesaid, — and I feel for some days after 
as if I had suffered terribly from a species of 
night-mare. So hideous is the life, so degraded 
the company, so revolting are the scenes at these 
night-houses, I know not why the law permits 
them to be open. I am sure they can answer no 
good or moral end. Mr. Norton, a few days 
since, said, in deciding a case at the Lambeth 
police-office, he hoped a law would soon be pass- 
ed to close night-houses. On this head the po- 
lice magistrates are unanimous. 



BOXING NIGHT. 

I am rather out of conceit with. Christmas boxes. 
I have been wished the compliments of the sea- 
son by no less than six individuals this very- 
morning, and for those good wishes I, poor man 
though I be, with family of my own to work 
for, have had to pay half-a-crown each. I grow 
suspicious of every smiling face I meet. I walk 
with my hands in my pocket, and my eyes cast 
down. I wonder how it fares with my strong- 
minded wife at home. I know she will have 
had a rare battle to fight. She will have had 
the Postman — and the Dustman — and the Waits 
— and the Sweep — and the Turncock — and the 
Lamplighter — and the Grocer's lad — and the 
Butcher's boy ; and if she compounds with them 
at the rate of a shilling a-piece, she may bless 
her stars. I feel that I cannot stand much of 
-this kind of work, and that for a merry Christ- 
mas and a happy New Year I shall have to pay 
rather handsomely. Stop at home — tie up your 



BOXING NIGHT. 183 

knockers — say you are sick or dead, or a share- 
holder in the Royal British Bank, still you can- 
not escape the tender mercies of a London Box- 
ing day. Mind, I have not one word to say of 
the various good wishes and gifts offered by 
friends and relatives to each other as pledges of 
esteem and goodwill. I would be the last to 
find fault with the customs originating in the 
warm heart of love, and honoured by the sanc- 
tion of the whole civilized world. By all means 
let us reverence them ten-fold. But I have a 
right to complain that I am compelled to pay 
for mercenary goodwill, and that on me, or such 
as me, a tax is levied which does no good in 
most cases, and frequently does an immense 
amount of harm. When I read, as I am sure 
to do, in the police reports of the next day, that, 
" yesterday, being the day after Boxing day, 
the time of the magistrates was chiefly occupied 
with cases of drunkenness/' am I not right in 
wishing that I had kept the money in my own 
pocket? Some of my friends would do that, 
but then for the next twelve months they are 
hampered and inconvenienced in a thousand ways. 
As a wise man, I choose the least of two evils, 
but I am an unwilling victim nevertheless. But 



184 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

a truce to my meditations ; let us look at London 
on a Boxing night. By daylight you would 
scarce know London. A new race seems to have 
invaded the streets, filled the omnibuses, swarm- 
ed into the bazaars and the Arcade, choked up the 
eating-houses and the beer-shops. Smith with 
his Balmoral boots, Brown with his all-round 
collar, Jones with his Noah's Ark coat, Robinson 
with the straight tile, which young England 
deems the cheese, delight us no more with their 
snobby appearance and gentish airs ; to-day this 
is the poor man's holiday. You can tell him by 
the awkwardness with which he wears his Sun- 
day clothes, by the startling colour of his ties, 
by the audacious appearance of his waistcoat. If 
he would only dress as a gentleman dresses, he 
would look as well, but he must be fine. Well, 
it matters little so long as he be happy, whether 
he is so or not ; and let him pass with his wife 
and children, all full of wonder and delight as 
they stare in at the shop-windows and think 
everything — how happy are they in the delusion ! 
— that all that glitters is gold. Let us wish them 
a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. 

And now the dull, dark day, by the magic 
power of gas, has been transformed into gay and 



BOXING NIGHT. 185 

brilliant night. The thousands who have spent 
the day sight-seeing are not satiated, and are 
flocking round the entrances of the various 
theatres. Let us stand on the stage of the Vic- 
toria, and see them to the number of fifteen 
hundred mounted upon the gallery benches. 
Through the small door near the ceiling they 
come down like a Niagara, and you expect to 
see them hurled by hundreds into the pit. What 
a Babel of sounds ! It is in vain one cries 
"Harder!" "'Ate off!" " Down in front!" 
" Silence !" Boys in the gallery are throwing 
orange peel all over the pit ; Smith halloos to 
Brown, and Brown to Smith ; a sailor in a pri- 
vate box recognises some comrades beneath, and 
immediately a conversation ensues ; rivals meet 
and quarrel ; women treat each other to the 
contents of their baskets — full of undigestible 
articles, you may be sure, with a bottle of gin in 
the corner. The play — it is that refreshing 
drama, the "Battersea Brigand" — proceeds in 
dumb-show ; but the pantomime, the subject of 
which is, " Wine, War, and Love, and Queen 
Virtue in the Vistas of Light or Glitter," — with 
what a breathless calm that is ushered in. It 
is an old silly affair. Harlequin, clown, and 



186 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

pantaloon, are they not all very dreary in their 
mirth? Yet the audience is in a roar of 
laughter, and little babes clap their tiny hands, 
and tears of laughter chase each other down the 
withered cheeks of age. This night in every 
theatre of London is a similar scene witnessed. 
The British public is supposed to be unusually 
weak at Christmas, and tricks that were childish 
and stale when George the Third was king, and 
jokes venerable even in Joe Miller's time, are 
still supposed to afford the most uproarious 
amusement to a people boasting its Christianity, 
its civilisation, and enlightenment. Of all con- 
ventionalisms those of the stage are the most 
rigid, antiquated, and absurd. 

But the thousands outside who did not get in 
— what are they about ? Look at that respect- 
able mechanic ; you saw him in the morning as 
happy as a prince, and almost as fine ; he stands 
leaning against the lamp-post, apparently an 
idiot. His hat is broken — his coat is torn— his 
face is bloody — his pockets are empty; not a 
friend is near, and he is far away from home. 
It is clear too what he has been about. Come 
on a few steps further — three policemen are 
carrying a woman to Bow-street. A hooting 



BOXING NIGHT. 187 

crowd follow ; slie heeds them not, nor cares she 
that she has lost her bonnet — that her hair 
streams loosely in the wind — that her gown (it 
is her Sunday one) is all torn to tatters — or that 
her person is rudely exposed. The further we 
go, and the later it grows, the more 01 these sad 
pictures shall we see. Of course we do not look 
for such in Regent-street, or Belgravia, or 
Oxford- street, or the Strand. Probably in them 
we shall meet respectable people staggering 
along under the influence of drink — but they 
are not noisy or obstreperous — they do not curse 
and swear — they do not require the aid of the 
police. We must go into the low neighbour- 
hoods — into St Giles', or Drury-lane, or Rat- 
cliffe-highway, or the New-cut, or Whitechapel 
— if we would see the miseries of London on 
Boxing night. We must take our stand by 
some gin-palace. We must stay there till the 
crowds it has absorbed and poisoned are turned 
loose and maddened into the streets. Then what 
horrible scenes are realized. Here an Irish 
faction meet, and men, women, and children 
engage in a general melee, and cries of murder 
rend the air, and piercing shrieks vex the dull 
ear of night. There two mates are stripped and 



188 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

fighting, who but this morning were bosom 
friends, and who to-morrow would not harm a 
hair of each other's heads. Here a mechanic 
with a bloody head is being borne to the neigh- 
bouring hospital, to lie there a few months at 
the public expense, while his" family are main- 
tained by the parish. Again, we meet two 
wives nursing young babes scared into unnatural 
silence, clenching their fists in each other's faces, 
and with difficulty restrained from acts of more 
savage violence, by their drunken husbands. 
Their day's holiday has come to this. In the 
metropolis in 1853, the number of public-houses 
was 5729 — the number of beer-shops 3613. 
These figures give a total of 9342. If on this 
night we suppose on an average one fight in the 
course of the evening takes place in each of 
these drinking shops, we can get some idea 
of what goes on in London on a Boxing night. 
In passing at midnight down Drury-lane, I see 
three fights in a five minutes' walk. Enlighten- 
ed native of Timbuctoo, will you not pity our 
London heathens and send a few missionaries 
here! 



THE MOGUL, 

Not the Great Mogul in Thibet, but the Mogul 
in Drury-lane, is an increasingly popular place 
of public amusement. I was there a few years 
since, and it was not more than half full. The 
other night I could hardly get standing room, 
though I paid sixpence and went with the oper- 
ative swells into the gallery. In these clays 
the test of everything is success. We speak 
well of the tradesman who does the largest busi- 
ness — of the writer whose books sell the most — 
of the actor or preacher that draws the largest 
crowd. We do not stop to criticise the manner 
in which that business is done, the influence of 
the writer, the doctrine taught by the preacher, 
or the character of the acting. On the ordinary 
principle, then, the Mogul is a creditable estab- 
lishment, for it is a successful one. Indeed, in 
the present state of society, it is hardly possible 
to conceive how a place that combines enter- 
tainment and drinking together can well be 



190 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

otherwise. In the course of last summer Vaux- 
hall was open a few nights ; I was credibly in- 
formed that on each night it was supposed not 
more than half the company paid for admis- 
sion, the other half having been admitted by 
means of orders. It is calculated the sale of 
drink and refreshment to the crowd thus col- 
lected will yield a profit sufficient to cover 
all expenses. Thus it is such places as the 
Mogul pay. The entrance fee and the sale of 
intoxicating drinks must amount to a sum out 
of which a proprietor can extract a handsome 
profit. 

Thus at the Mogul you have a double attrac- 
tion. Are you a gin-drinker, you can go and 
get your quartern or half-quartern over the bar 
— or you can lounge into the concert-room and 
quietly sit soaking the whole evening ; for, as 
the performance does not close till midnight, the 
time admits of a man getting "fou" between 
the commencement and the close of the enter- 
tainment. Drury-lane is what may be called 
a low neighbourhood, devoted principally to 
butchers' and bakers' shops, pawnbrokers' estab- 
lishments, and gin-palaces. Pass these latter 
any hour of the day you will, and you will find 



THE MOGUL. 191 

them crowded by laundresses, and charwomen, 
and haggard old crones from the sister isle, and 
young wives whose husbands, it may be, are hard 
at work. There they stand in the streets, with 
babies in their arms and dirty children in rags 
by their side, gossiping with women as ill-condi- 
tioned as themselves ; and as gossiping makes 
them thirsty, and as drinking makes people 
drunk, it is not difficult to imagine the state in 
which many of these women are. In the mid- 
dle of the day it is very obvious that many of 
them have had more than enough. How they 
can afford it always puzzles me — I cannot, I 
know, and I believe my weekly earnings equal 
theirs. The pawnbrokers may help them — but 
their material guarantees cannot be perpetually 
forthcoming. These gin-drinkers live cheap, I 
grant. They herd in the horrid slums of Drury- 
lane — and people say sometimes, Can you wonder 
that such poor wretches drink? but they forget 
that it is the drink that makes them such poor 
wretches. The money these women spend in 
drink would pay for decent apartments and 
clothes that would be clean and comfortable, not 
ragged and. filthy, and stinking with every 
abomination. It is not poverty that creates 



192 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

drunkenness, but drunkenness that creates pov- 
erty, and the poverty thus created— the dreari- 
est kind of all poverty — abounds in Drury-lane. 
Well, then, exclaims one of the new school, who 
believes mankind are to be regenerated by fid- 
dling, does not such a place as the Mogul have a 
beneficial influence ? I will answer this by de- 
scribing the kind of amusement afforded at the 
Mogul. You are pent up in a room where the 
air is ten times worse than in any theatre — any 
crowded chapel — or worse than in the late Read- 
ing Room of the British Museum or the House 
of Commons. You see a little of the worst act- 
ing in London — broad farce, chiefly by artists, if 
I may term them such, who are more remarkable 
for their weakness than their strength. " Speak 
the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, 
trippingly on the tongue ; but if you mouth it, 
as many of our players do, I had as lief the 
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the 
air too much with your hands," says Hamlet ; 
but actors of the class you meet in the Mogul 
never seem to have heard of the Prince of Den- 
mark. There are some people who doubt 
whether good acting has a beneficial effect, but 
there are none who doubt that the effect of bad 



THE MOGUL. 193 

acting is altogether bad. But the dramatical 
part of the entertainment constitutes but a small 
part of the evening's amusement. There is a 
lady who sings sentimental songs, and a gentle- 
man who sings comic ones, and another gent, 
with dismal yoice and weary mien, who de- 
clares — 

"The gurls of dear Old England 
Are the gurls of gurls for me-e-eh." 

I am not aware that any of these performers 
sing songs of an objectionable character ; and if 
a sneer is now and then introduced at what com- 
mon decent people believe to be good, and true, 
and righteous, and of beneficial tendency, it is 
only, perhaps, such as would be approved of by 
the patrons of the Haymarket. You tell me 
that this is better than sitting all night at a bar 
drinking ; but, I ask, is not this entertainment 
itself an excuse for drinking ? You see the room 
is full of men and women evidently belonging to 
the working classes ; now of all men working 
men can least afford to waste time in such places. 
All their future emphatically depends upon 
themselves. More than most men are they 
called upon to exercise self-denial and to culti- 
vate their powers, if they would achieve inde- 



194 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

pendence. But how can the working men who 
sit night after night in such places as the Mogul 
ever hope to rise ? yet any night there must be 
a couple of hundred of such present, for they 
swarm like bees. They come professedly for the 
entertainment, but all the while it lasts they are 
doing a good deal in the drinking line. It is 
not one glass or two that will satisfy them ; and 
the worst of it is, that many very clever fellows 
when once they begin drinking do not know 
when to leave off. In this respect they are like 
Dr. Johnson, who could either feast or fast, but 
could never be a moderate drinker. They come 
to the Mogul — perhaps they would never think 
of sitting all night in a public-house — but they 
come to the Mogul for the entertainment, and 
they finish by drinking as if they had come for 
the drink alone. The Mogul is indeed an educa- 
tional establishment, but unfortunately it educes 
the wrong set of faculties. In Drury-lane, of 
all lanes in the world, there is the least occa- 
sion to associate intoxicating drink with happi- 
ness. Everywhere the idea is a mischievous de- 
lusion and a remnant of barbarism, but there it 
is a positive curse. At the Mogul you will see 
the sweetheart with her lover, the mother with 



THE MOGUL. 195 

her child — it may be the sucking babe, — till 
midnight, breathing an air of tobacco smoke, 
the husband and the wife, all, you say, enjoying 
themselves in a social way, but all, I say, en- 
couraging an appetite which, if it gets the mas- 
tery, — and in the majority of cases it does, — will 
destroy them without mercy. Were the Mogul 
simply a gin-palace, it would have far less 
patronage, it would merely have its share of the 
general trade ; but the fact that it provides mu- 
sical and dramatic entertainments — that it gives 
decent people an excuse for drinking — that it 
attracts those whom a common gin-shop would 
repel — is that precisely which gives it its power 
for danger. Such places are decoy shops, the 
more dangerous as drinking in Drury-lane is 
really disgusting, and enough to make a man a 
teetotaller for life. The neighbourhood is rich 
in warnings, but the habitue of the Mogul soon 
learns to heed them not. 



o 2 



CALDWELL'S. 

A stranger, ignorant of our inner life, and un- 
acquainted with our social system, knowing only 
that we call ourselves a Christian people, and 
that we boast that Christianity places women 
in a peculiarly favoured position, might dwell 
among us for awhile, and, seeing how woman is 
flattered and followed, might imagine that our 
condition was perfect, and that here, at least, 
woman, the weak, was sheltered by man, the 
strong. In the dazzling ball-room — on the 
glittering promenade — he might meet the lovely 
and the fair, and deem that they were no bril- 
liant exception, but as they were sheltered and 
loved, so were sheltered and loved all of their 
common sex. Grieved would he be to find out 
his mistake ; yet more grieved would he be to 
know that the graceful drapery that added to 
the beauty that everywhere flashed upon his eye 
was wrought by tender and delicate women, 
who, pale and wan, slave at the needle from 



caldwell's. 197 

morn till eve, and from eve till again the dim 
grey of morn gleamed in the east — by women 
withered before their prime — by women who, 
for no crime, but from their simple desire to 
live by the honest and honourable labour of their 
hands, are shut up in heated and unhealthy 
rooms, debarred from social duties and joys, 
and who know nothing of life but its wants and 
woes — by women who can find in slavery itself 
nothing more forlorn than their melancholy fate 
— by women to the majority of whom there is 
no honest way of escape from the lingering death 
that besets them, but the grave. 

We would guard our readers against giving 
way to mawkish sentimentalism ; that it is not 
our aim to excite. There are employers who 
are all they should be ; there are milliners' and 
dressmakers' assistants who find their labour 
what all healthy labour is, a blessing, and not a 
curse. Nor is every dressmaker shut up in 
these hot-houses of disease beautiful, nor the 
daughter of one who has seen better days. It 
is true that some of these unfortunate girls are 
the daughters of " clergymen, medical men, and 
officers ;" but it is because they partake of our 
common humanity — because they have human 



198 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

blood and human hearts — because life was given 
them that in it they might bless and be blessed 
— because, in their injuries and wrongs, the hu- 
man family and its Father above are injured 
and wronged — that we claim for them from 
society sympathy and redress. "We say nothing 
of the moral danger to which, in a metropolis 
like this, they are peculiarly exposed. When 
sin offers so golden a bait, it shows that those 
who yet continue at their work deserve respect 
and aid. If some of them have fallen — if some 
of them, driven by despair, have walked our 
streets to gain their bread, let us blame the sys- 
tem which has made so infamous and wretched 
a mode of life seem a change to be desired. 
Let the cure be adopted ; let the work now done 
be distributed among a larger number of hands ; 
and in this country, at least, there is no lack of 
persons eager to be employed. In many of the 
fashionable establishments increased cost of pro- 
duction can be of but little moment. Let em- 
ployers learn to practise humanity, and let our 
high-born and influential ladies see to it, that it 
is no thoughtlessness of theirs that compels their 
poorer sisters to toil with a sinking frame and a 
heavy heart. As a nation, we have worked out 



caldwell's. 199 

one problem in civilization ; we have shown that 
the utmost wealth can exist side by side with 
the deepest poverty — the grossest ignorance with 
the most cultivated knowledge — the most ele- 
vating piety with the most debasing fetichism — 
the fairest virtue with the most revolting vice. 
Be it our nobler work to show to the nations of 
the earth how, while our higher classes live in 
refinement and wealth, there is no class, how- 
ever humble, but can joy in the possession of 
social happiness and rights. 

But what, you ask, has this to do with Cald- 
well's ? Only this, that of the class to which 
I have referred, I believe more may be found of 
an evening at Caldwell's than anywhere else in 
London. It is not all dressmakers who toil thus 
severely and unnaturally ; and few of them are 
there who do not in the course of the year find 
time to pay Caldwell's a visit. Who has not 
heard of Caldwell's Soirees Dansantes ? Are 
they not advertised in every paper ? Are they 
not posted in gigantic bills in every street ? In 
quiet country lanes, miles and miles away from 
town, do we not come across the coloured letters 
by which Mr. Caldwell announces his entertain- 
ment to the world ? Who is Mr. John Caldwell ? 



200 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

We will let him speak for himself. He has an 
establishment in Dean-street, Soho. The build- 
ing cost him nearly four thousand pounds. On 
boxing-night he had as many as 600 customers, 
" and on average nights," he tells us, " I have 
about 200." The charge for admission is eight- 
pence. Mr. Caldwell has a public-house just 
by, and from that supplies wine, and ale, and 
spirits. " I have never had a case of drunken- 
ness in my place for years ; I am very particular 
— I never let a drunken man remain." On an 
average about thirty glasses of spirits are drunk 
in the dancing-room in the course of an evening, 
and about forty glasses of beer. " I believe my 
place is carried on in as respectable a manner as 
can be. Some of the first noblemen come ; there 
are some very respectable tradesmen round the 
neighbourhood, and a great many young people 
from the neighbourhood. The rooms are prin- 
cipally supported by the working classes. The 
dancing-saloon opens at eight, and is closed at a 
quarter to twelve." Such is the evidence given 
by Mr. Caldwell himself before the select com- 
mittee of the House of Commons on public- 
houses. As is perfectly natural, it is all co- 
te ur de rose. The union of the first noblemen 



caldwell's. 201 

and the elite of the working classes over spirits- 
and- water, or in the mazy dance, is a beautiful 
specimen of fraternisation, and the small quan- 
tity of beer and spirits drunk by 200 persons 
indicates an amount of sobriety rare in places of 
public amusement. I think Mr. Caldwell has a 
little understated the case. I fear he forgot to 
tell the committee that the drinking at his 
place was in the refreshment-room down-stairs, 
not in the dancing- room above ; while in the 
latter the small quantity he asserts is consumed, 
I am inclined to think, much more may be dis- 
posed of down-stairs. In the course of his own 
examination some disagreeable truths oozed out. 
We give a couple of questions and answers in 
proof of this. — Sir George Grey : " Do you 
mean to say that the dancing-saloon would have 
no sufficient attraction for the people unless 
there were connected with it the facility of ob- 
taining spirituous liquors?" "I think not; the 
people want a glass of wine, or negus, or brancly- 
and-ivater" Again, Mr. Caldwell has been un- 
able to procure a license on account of the oppo- 
sition of the publicans in the neighbourhood. 
The Chairman asks, " Do you think the pub- 
licans would withdraw their opposition ?" " Yes, 



202 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

they begin to find my house an advantage ; when 
parties leave my rooms, they stand together at the 
comer of the streets, and say, We tvill have a 
parting glass. Tliey do not all have it at my 
rooms." 

Now this answer does not well coincide with 
Mr. Caldwell's former evidence. It is quite as 
much the drink as the dancing that is the at- 
traction, and as to his respectable tradesmen, 
and the fact of persons not being tipsy, and that 
of some of the first noblemen coming there, all 
these assertions are fairly open to criticism. It 
was only the other day I heard a London magis- 
trate declare that publicans never could tell 
when a person was tipsy ; and as to respectability, 
your Eobsons, and Camerons, and Sadleirs are 
always considered highly respectable. Ask the 
first person you meet about your neighbours. 
What is the answer ? Oh, they are a highly 
respectable family ; they are immensely rich. 
And as to noblemen coming into such places, I 
imagine that would be precisely the reason 
why the judicious father of a pretty girl would 
prefer her dancing anywhere rather than in 
Mr. Caldwell's establishment in Dean-street. I 
have not much faith in the benefits of that spe- 



caldwell's. 203 

cies of the mixture of all ranks. Like the 
Irishman's reciprocity, it is all on one side. 
Tennyson makes his hero tell Lady Clara Vere 
de Vere — 

" At me you smiled, but unbeguiled 
I saw the snare and I retired, — 
The daughter of a hundred earls, 
You are not one to be desired.' ' 

But perchance a young maiden, led away by 
the excitement of the hour, could not find it in 
her heart to address similar language to Lady 
Clara Vere de Vere's brother. The last victim 
always believes that she is to be the exception 
to all general rules ; she may transgress, but not 
pay the penalty — pluck the forbidden fruit, and 
for doing so not forfeit Eden — plunge wildly 
into sin, and sorrow, and shame, and yet find 
peace in her heart and the light of heaven lying 
on her path ; but cause and effect are eternal, 
and, youth gone, and pleasure gone, and the 
power to attract gone, and the inward sense of 
right succeeded by the stings of conscience and 
the gnawing of remorse, what is left but to weep 
madly and in vain for 

" The tender grace of a day that is dead " ? 



204 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

But we are in Caldwell's, — let us go into the 
gallery and look down. I know not the name of 
the new dances, but how the women swim round 
the room, as the music now hurriedly hastens, 
now softly dies away. The girl that dances here 
so modestly to-night in twelve months will have 
lost her maiden shame, will be dressed in silks 
and satins, will be dancing at the Argyll, and 
supping at Scott's or Quin's. That girl they call 
Rose — and a rose she is, for she might shine in 
a Belgravian drawing-room, and walk in beauty 
as a fairy queen — might have lit up a home with 
her love, and made a brave heart proud ; but here 
she comes, night after night, and domestic life 
is to her tame after music and dancing such as 
she has here. Beauty you will not find much 
of, nor that overdress which stamps the cha- 
racter of the women at the Casino or the Argyll 
in unmistakeable terms ; and the men are the 
class you usually meet in these places. They may 
be pickpockets, or they may be peers ; you can 
scarce tell the difference in these levelling days. 
If I had not Mr. Caldwell's express assertion to 
the contrary, I should certainly say that that 
young fellow with a pint bottle of champagne 
in his hand was decidedly drunk, — at any rate, 



caldwell's. . 205 

he has very much the appearance of a tipsy per- 
son ; but the waiters seem to be of Mr. Caldwell's 
opinion, and are still offering him more drink, 
and the women around seem to think it is rather 
fun than otherwise. Ah ! little do they reflect 
how such as he, under the influences of drink, 
forget the decencies of life, the claims of duty, 
forget even the common instincts of common 
humanity ; so that the wife, whom he has vowed 
to love, honour, and protect, is abandoned, and 
the home forsaken, for the orgies of the public- 
house. Do the women around us ever expect 
to be the wives and mothers of such, or have 
they, young and fair as many of them seem, 
learnt already that recklessness as to the future 
which robs life of all its glory and incarcerates 
the soul in a living grave ? I can see, even here, 
a gaiety more sad than tears. But I need not 
continue my description ; dancing in public 
rooms in the metropolis is much the same every- 
where. Of course the place is all that Mr. Cald- 
well says it is. I believe with him that it is as 
respectably conducted as establishments of the 
kind can be ; but at the same time Mr. Caldwell 
confesses it leads to drinking, and that is quite 



206 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

reason enough, independently of other obvious 
considerations, why I come away thankful that 
no wife or sister of mine is amongst the parties 
nightly to be met at Mr CaldwelPs soirees 
dansantes. 



CKEMOPNE. 

" In a set of pictures illustrative of Greek 
customs, it was quite impossible to leave out the 
hetcerce who gave such, a peculiar colouring to 
Grecian levity, and exercised so potent a sway 
over the life of the younger members of the com- 
munity. Abundant materials for such a sketch 
exist, for the Greeks made no secret of matters 
of this kind ; the difficulty has been not to sa- 
crifice the vividness of the picture of the ordi- 
nary intercourse with these women to the de- 
mands of our modern sense of propriety," says 
Professor Becker, in his truly admirable work 
on the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks. In 
the same manner, and for the same reason, the 
modern sense of propriety is supposed to be in 
the way of any very graphic description of Cre- 
morne; yet we have hetaerae almost as bewitching 
as Aspasia or the Corinthian Lais ; and if our 
students, and learned clergy, and holy bishops 
write long articles about the Athenian Dionysia 



208 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

only held once a year, why should we not speak 
of ours which last all the summer, and the scene 
of which is Cremorne? At the Dionysia the 
most unbridled merriment and drunkenness were 
the order of the day, and were held quite blame- 
less. For a while the most sober-minded bade 
adieu to the stringency of habit, following the 
well-known Greek maxim — 

" Ne'er blush, with, drink to spice the feast's gay hour, 
And, reeling, own the mighty wine-god's power.'* 

So it is in Cremorne. If Corinth had her groves 
sacred to Aphrodite, so has Cremorne. It offends 
our modern sense of propriety to speak of such 
matters. English people only see what they 
wish to see. If you are true — if you look at 
real life and say what you think of it, you shock 
our modern sense of propriety. We may talk 
about drainage and ventilation, and the advan- 
tages of soap, but there we must stop. Keep the 
outside clean, but do n't look within. Thus is it 
our writers make such blunders. For instance, 
good-meaning Mrs. Stowe, after she had written 
Uncle Tom, came here to be lionized, and to 
write a book about us. She did so, and a very 
poor book it was. But I must quote one passage 



CREM0RNE. 209 

from " Sunny Memories." In writing of a visit 
she paid to the Jardin Mabile in Paris, she 
writes, " Entrance to this Paradise can be had, 
for gentlemen a dollar, ladies free ; this tells the 
whole story. Nevertheless, do not infer that 
there are not respectable ladies there ; it is a 
place so remarkable that very few strangers 
stay long in Paris without taking a look at it. 
And though young ladies residing in Paris 
never go, and matrons very seldom, yet occa- 
sionally it is the case that some ladies of respect- 
ability look in. Nevertheless, aside from the 
impropriety inherent in the very nature of the 
waltzing, there was not a word, look, or ges- 
ture of immorality or impropriety. The dresses 
were all decent, and, if there was vice, it was 
vice masked under the guise of polite propriety. 
How different, I could not but reflect, is all this 
from the gin-palaces of London ! There, there 
is indeed a dazzling splendour of gas-lights, but 
there is nothing artistic, nothing refined, no- 
thing appealing to the imagination. There are 
only hogsheads and barrels, and the appliances 
for serving out strong drink ; and there for one 
sole end — the swallowing of the fiery stimulant 
— come the nightly thousands, from the gay and 



210 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

well-dressed to the haggard and tattered, in the 
last stage of debasement. The end is the same, 
by how different paths ! Here they dance along 
the path to ruin with flowers and music — there 
they cast themselves bodily, as it were, into the 
lake of fire." A more unfair comparison, I think, 
was never drawn ; a drinking- shop is much the 
same everywhere, and in Paris as well as in Lon- 
don, people, to use Mrs. Stowe's own words, cast 
themselves bodily into the lake of fire. We 
have our Jardin Mabile, but of course Mrs. 
Stowe never went there — as we have known 
good people confessing to entering theatres in 
Germany or France who on no account would 
have gone near one at home. If Mrs. Stowe had 
confessed to going to Cremorne, she would have 
been cut, and so she went to the Paris Cremorne 
instead ; but to write a true book on England, 
she should have gone to Cremorne. Look at 
Cremorne ; is it not one, as Disraeli is reported 
to have said, of the institutions of the country ? 
The Chelsea vestry complained of Cremorne, be- 
cause it injured the property in the neighbour- 
hood ;— the defence was, that Mr. Simpson had 
spent £30,000 or £40,000 upon it ; that he had 
given £1200 to the Wellington fund, and £300 



CREMORNE. 211 

— the profits of one night's entertainment — to the 
fund for the relief of the victims of the Indian 
mutiny. 

The gardens are beautiful, are kept in fine order, 
are adorned with really fine trees, and are 
watered by the Thames, here almost a silver 
stream. Though near London, on a summer 
evening the air is fresh and balmy, the amuse- 
ments are varied, the company are genteel in 
appearance, and here, as in Paris, they dance 
along the path to ruin with flowers and music. 
If Mrs. Stowe gives the preference to the Paris- 
ians, she may be right, but I am inclined to 
dispute the grounds of that preference. The 
gin-palaces are filled with our sots, with our 
utter wrecks, with all that is loathsome and low 
in man or woman. Your son, fresh from home 
and its sacred influences, is shy of entering a 
gin-palace at first. He goes there with a blush 
upon his cheek, and a sense of shame at his 
heart. He shrinks from its foul companionship, 
and when he has come out he resolves never to 
be what he has seen under those accursed roofs. 
But you take him to Cremorne, or you send him 
to the Argyle Rooms, or the Holborn Casino, 
and he is surrounded by temptation that speaks 
p 2 



212 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

to him with almost irresistible power. The wo- 
men are well-dressed and well-behaved. The 
drink does not repel but merely stimulates the 
hot passions of youth, and lulls the conscience. 
For one man that is ruined in a gin-shop there 
are twenty that are ruined at Cremorne. 

As to the morality of such places, that is not 
to be settled dogmatically by me or by any one 
else. Tennyson talks of men fighting their 
doubts, and gathering strength; in the same 
manner, men may fight temptation and gather 
strength, and one man may merely spend a 
pleasant evening where another may in the same 
interval of time ruin himself for life. The tares 
and the wheat, in this confused world of ours, 
grow side by side. Unnaturally, we bring up 
our sons only to pluck what we deem the wheat ; 
and immediately they are left to themselves, 
they begin gathering the tares, which we have 
not taught them are such, and have for them at 
least the charm of novelty. It does not do to 
say there is no pleasure in the world ; there is a 
great deal. The grass is green, though, it may 
be, sad sinners tread it. The sun shines as 
sweetly on carrion as on the Koh-i-noor. The 
lark high up at heaven's gate sings as loud a 



CREMORNE. 213 

song of praise, whether villains or lovers listen 
to its lays. Places are what we make them. 
I fear there are many blackguards at Cremorne ; 
the women most of them are undoubtedly 
hetaerae, and yet what a place it is for fun ! 
How jolly are all you meet ! How innocent are 
all the amusements, — the ascent of the balloon — 
the dancing — the equestrian performances — the 
comic song — the illuminations — the fire- works — 
the promenade on the grass lawn or in the 
gas-lit paths ; the impulses that come to us in 
the warm breath of the summer eve, how grate- 
ful are they all, and what a change from Cheap- 
side or from noisy manufactories still more con- 
fined ! By this light the scene is almost a fairy 
one. Can there be danger here ? Is there here 
nothing artistic — nothing refined — nothing ap- 
pealing to the imagination ? Come here, Mrs. 
Stowe, and judge. You will scandalize, I know, 
that portion of the religious public that never 
yet has looked at man and society honestly in 
the face, but you will better understand the 
frightful hypocrisies of our domestic life ; you 
will better understand how it is that a religion 
which we pay so much for, and to which we 
render so much outward homage, has so little 



214 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

hold upon the heart and life. There is no harm 
in Cremorne, if man is born merely to enjoy him- 
self — to eat, drink, be merry, and die. I grant it 
is rather inconvenient for a young man who has 
his way to fight in life to indulge a taste for 
pleasure, to launch out into expenses beyond his 
means, to mix with company that is more amus- 
ing than moral, and to keep late hours ; and 
young fellows who go to Cremorne must run all 
these risks. It may do you, my good sir, no 
harm to go there. You have arrived at an age 
when the gaieties of life have ceased to be dan- 
gerous. You come up by one of the Citizen 
boats to Chelsea after business hours, and stroll 
into the garden and view the balloon, or sit out 
the ballet, or gaze with a leaden eye upon the 
riders, and the clowns, and the dancing, or the 
fireworks, and return home in decent time to 
bed ; and if you waste a pound or two, you can 
afford it. But it is otherwise with inflammable 
youth — a clerk, it may be, in a merchant's ware- 
house on 30s. a- week, and it is really alarming 
to think what excitements are thus held out to 
the passions, at all times so difficult to control. 
There are the North Woolwich Gardens — there 
is Highbury Barn — all rivalling Cremorne, and 



CREMORNE. 215 

all capable of containing some thousands of idle 
pleasure-seekers. Yauxhall, with, its drunken 
orgies, is gone never to return — the place that 
knows it now will know it no more for ever — 
but such places are what thoughtless people call 
respectable, are frequented by respectable peo- 
ple ; and amidst mirth and music, foaming up in 
the sparkling wine, looking out of dark blue 
eyes, reddening the freshest cheeks, and nestling 
in the richest curls, there lurks the great enemy 
of God and man. Young man, such an enemy 
you cannot resist ; your only refuge is in flight. 
Ah, you think that face fair as you ask its owner 
to drink with you ; it would have been fairer had 
it never gone to Cremorne. A father loved her 
as the apple . of his eye ; she was the sole 
daughter of his home and heart, and here she 
comes night after night to drink and dance ; a 
few years hence and you shall meet her drinking 
and cursing in the lowest gin-palaces of St. 
Giles's, and the gay fast fellows around you now 
will be digging gold in Australia, or it may be 
walking the streets in rags, or it may be dying 
in London hospitals of lingering disease, or, 
which is worse than all, it may be living on 
year after year with all that is divine in man 



216 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. ' 

utterly blotted out and destroyed. The path 
that leads to life is strait and narrow, and few 
there be who find it. 

One night as I was walking with a friend in 
Paris, the correspondent of one of the London 
daily papers, we passed the Maison Doree, re- 
nowned all over the civilised world for its 
magnificent dinners. 

My friend said, " I had a famous dinner here 
not long since." 

"With whom?" said I. 

"With young A ," was his answer. 

" Indeed ! Do you know what has become of 
him?" 

"No." 

" He has committed suicide ! " 

" Impossible." 

" Indeed he did, this night week. The fact 
has been kept out of the papers, but it is too 
true." 

I then went on to narrate the painful tragedy, 
and though I would hurt the feelings of no one 
living, yet I cannot omit a slight reference to the 
case as a warning to young men entering on a 
career of gaiety. The gentleman to whom I re- 
fer was a man of singular talent, and had com- 



CREMORNE. 217 

menced life under remarkably advantageous cir- 
cumstances. Young — lie was only thirty-one 
when he terminated his career — he had already 
acquired in his profession a European reputa- 
tion ; he was the associate and friend of some of 
our most popular authors and wits, more especi- 
ally of that class who have endeavoured to laugh 
down temperance reformers and everything con- 
nected with them. Not long since he went 
down to Cremorne. It was noon when he 
entered, and he called for brandy-and-water. 
It was brought him ; he drank it, and called for 
more. Gaily he drank it, and gaily he treated 
every one around ; for was he not a jolly good 
fellow ? The day advanced, the company kept 

crowding in, and there was poor A still 

drinking. Summer night in all her beauty 
came, and fast men from town drove down in 
Hansoms, and women, fair and frail, flocked 
around them ; and there was singing, and danc- 
ing, and eating, and drinking, and laughing, 
and making merry, and in crowded shops work- 
men's wives were buying the Sunday's dinner — 
for it was Saturday evening — and noble women 
were thinking of what they should say to their 
little ones on the morrow, and pious divines were 



218 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

thinking how best they could edify the saint, or 
reclaim the backsliding, or warn the sinner ; 

when, in the twinkling of an eye, poor A- 

dashed a drop of Prussic acid into a glass of soda 
water, staggered twelve steps, and then, in that 
garden of Circe — in that assembly of pleasure- 
seekers — in the very climax of their mirth and 
gaiety — dropped down dead. Such was an 
outline of the sad story I had to tell as I and 
my friend passed the Maison Doree. 



THE COSTEEMOJVTGEKS' EEEE-AKD-EASY. 

Every class in London has its ^particular 
pleasures. The gay have their theatres — the 
philanthropic their Exeter Hall — the wealthy 
their "ancient concerts " — the costermongers 
what they term their sing-song. 

I once penetrated into one of these dens. It 
was situated, in a very low neighbourhood, not far 
from a gigantic brewery, where you could not 
walk a yard scarcely without coming to a public- 
house. The costermongers are a numerous race. 
Walk the poor neighbourhoods on a Saturday 
night, and hear the cries, — "Chestnuts all *ot a 
penny a score/' " Three a penny , Yarmouth 
bloaters, " " Penny a lo t, fine russets, a penny a lot, ' 7 
" Now's your time, fine whelks, a penny a lot." 
Well, the itinerant vendors of these delicacies are 
costermongers. Or in the daytime see the long 
carts drawn by donkies loaded with greens and 
other vegetables, all announced to the public in 
stentorian lungs — these men are costermongers. 



220 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Listen to those boys calling, "Ho, ho, hi, hi, — 
what do you think of this here? a penny a 
bunch, a penny a bunch. Here's your turnips !" 
Those boys are costermongers' lads. It is seldom 
they last long as men. They soon lose their 
voice, and how they pick up a living then no 
one can tell. Their talk is peculiar. Mr. May- 
hew tells us their slang consists merely in pro- 
nouncing each word as if spelt backwards. "I say, 
Curly, will you do a top of reeb (pot of beer) ?" 
one costermonger may say to another. " It 's on 
doog, Whelkey, on doog 9 ' (no good, no good), 
the second may reply; "I've had a regular 
troseno (bad sort) to-day; I've been doing dab 
(bad) with my tol (lot) — han't made a yennep 
(penny), s'elp me — ." " Why, I've cleared a 
fiatchenorc (half- a- crown) a 5 ready." Master 
Whelkey will answer perhaps, "But kool the 
esilop (look at the police), kool Mm (look at him). 
Curly: Nommits (be off), I am going to do the 
tightner" (have my dinner). Would you know 
more of them, come with me. 

Just look at the people in this public-house. 
A more drunken, dissipated, wretched lot you 
never saw. There are one or two little tables in 
front of the bar and benches, and on these 



THE COSTERMOXGERS' FREE- AXD- EASY. 221 

benches are the most wretched men and women 
possible to imagine. They are drinking gin and 
smoking, and all have the appearance of con- 
firmed sots. They are shoemakers in the neigh- 
bourhood, and these women with them are their 
wives. " Lor' bless you, sir/' exclaims the land- 
lord, " they spend all they has in drink. They 
live on a penny roll and a ha'porth of sprats 
or mussels, and they never buy any clothes, ex- 
cept once in three or four years, and then they 
get some second-hand rubbish." And here, 
when they are not at work, they sit spending 
their money. Are there none to save them ? — 
none to come here and pluck these brands from 
the burning ? I know they are short-lived ; I 
see in their pale, haggard, blotched, and bloated 
faces premature death. The first touch of ill- 
ness will carry them off as rotten leaves fall in 
November ; but ere this be the case, can you not 
reveal to them one glimpse of a truer and diviner 
life ? But come up-stairs into this concert-room, 
where about a hundred costermongers and shoe- 
makers are listening to the charms of song. Talk 
about the refining influence of music ! it is not 
here you will find such to be the case. The men 
and women and lads sitting round these shabby- 



222 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

looking tables have come here to drink, for that 
is their idea of enjoyment ; and whilst we would 
not grudge them one particle of mirth, we can- 
not but regret that their standard of enjoyment 
should be so low. The landlord is in the chair, 
and a professional man presides at the piano. 
As to the songs, they are partly professional and 
partly by volunteers. I cannot say much for 
their character. The costermongers have not 
very strict notions of meum and tuum ; they are 
not remarkable for keeping all the command- 
ments; their reverence for the conventional ideas 
of decency and propriety is not very profound ; 
their notions are not peculiarly polished or re- 
fined, nor is the language in which they are 
clothed, nor the mode in which they are utter- 
ed, such as would be recognised in Belgravia. 
Dickens makes Mrs. General in " Little Dorrit" 
remark, " Society never forms opinions, and is 
never demonstrative." Well, the costermongers 
are the reverse of all this, and as the pots of heavy 
and the quarterns of juniper are freely quaffed, 
and the world and its cares are forgotten, and 
the company becomes hourly more noisy and 
hilarious, you will perceive the truth of my re- 
marks. Anybody sings who likes ; sometimes a 



THE COSTERMONGERS* FREE-AND-EASY. 223 

man, sometimes a female, volunteers a perform- 
ance, and I am sorry to say it is not the girls 
who sing the most delicate songs. The burdens 
of these songs are what you might expect. In 
one you were recommended not to go courting 
in the kitchen when the master was at home, 
but, instead > to choose the " airey." One song, 
with a chorus, was devoted to the deeds of 
" those handsome men, the French Grenadiers." 
Another recommended beer as a remedy for low 
spirits ; and thus the harmony of the evening is 
continued till twelve, when the landlord closes 
his establishment, to the great grief of the few 
who have any money left, who would only be 
too happy to keep it up all night. Let me say 
a word about costermonger literature. I see Mr. 
Manby Smith calculates its pecuniary value at 
twelve thousand a-year. It is wretched in every 
way, — in composition, in printing, in cuts, and 
paper. These streets ballads — we are all familiar 
with them — are sold by a class of men called 
patterers, and are written so as to bear on the 
events of the day. Thus, at the last Lord 
Mayor's day we had a song sung in the streets, 
of which the following is a specimen : — 



224 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

" Away they go, the high and low, 

Such glorious sights was never seen, 
But still the London Lord Mayor's show 

Is not as it has former been, 
When old Dick Whittington was mayor, 

And our forefathers had to go ; 
They had not got no Peelers there, 

To guard great London's Lord Mayor's show." 

And we are told in another verse that — 

" They will talk of Russia, France, and that, 
And mention how the money goes ; 
Each man will eat a pect of sprats, 

That's the fashion at the Lord Mayor's show." 

Some of these songs are indecent ; almost all 

of them have a morbid sympathy with criminals. 

Thus Redpath in the following lines is almost 

made a martyr to his benevolence and Christian 

life. 

"Alas ! I am convicted, there's no one to hlame — 
I suppose you all know Leopold Redpath is my name ; 
I have one consolation, perhaps I've more, 
All the days of my life I ne'er injured the poor. 

" I procured for the widow and orphan their oread, 
The naked I clothed, and the hungry I fed ; 
But still I am sentenced, you must understand, 
Because I had "broken the laws of the land. 

" A last fond adieu to my heart-hroken wife — 
Leopold Eedpath, your husband, 's transported for life ; 
Providence will protect you, love, do not deplore, 
Since your husband never hurted or injured the poor. 



THE COSTERMOXGERS' FREE-AND-EASY. 225 

" In London and Weybridge I in splendour did dwell, 
By the rich and the poor was respected right well; 
But now I'm going — oh! where shall I say — 
A convict from England, oh ! far, far away. 

***** 

" I might have lived happy with my virtuous wife, 
Kept away from temptation, from tumult and strife, 
I 'd enough to support me in happiness to live, 
But I wanted something more poor people for to give." 

The street singers of the metropolis seized upon 
the Waterloo Bridge Tragedy as a fit subject for 
the exercise of their dismal strains. The following 
is printed verbatim, from an illustrated broad- 
sheet vended "at the charge of one halfpenny: " — 
" Oh such a year for dreadful murders 
As this before was never seen ; 
In England, Ireland, Britain over, 

Such horrid crimes has never been. 
But this which now has been discovered 

Very far exceeds the whole, 
The very thought makes men to shudder, 
How horrible for to unfold. 
" See and read in every paper 

This dreadful crime, this mystery, 
Worse, far worse, than James Greenacre's 
Is the London mystery. 
" His body it was cut to pieces — 
Oh how dreadful was his fate ! 
Then placed in brine and hid in secret — 

Horrible for to relate. 
The head and limbs had been divided — 

TVhere parts was taken no one knows ; 
In a carpet bag they packed the body, 
Over Waterloo bridge they did it throw. 
Q 



226 THE NIGHT SIDE OE LONDON. 

" It is supposed that a female monster 

Her victim's body onward dragged, 
"With no companion to assist her, 

All packed within a carpet bag. 
Justice determined is to take her, 

When without doubt she '11 punished be, 
The atrocious female Greenacre 

Of the Waterloo Bridge Tragedy/* 

The last effusion of the kind I now quote, 
refers to the settlement of the great fight be- 
tween Sayers and Heenan : — 

" Oh ! list and you shall hear, I vow, 
About the English belt, and how 
It's settled, and I'll tell you now, 

'Tween gallant Sayers and Heenan. 
Proud Heenan cried, the belt is mine, 
Said Tom, it never shall be thine, 
Before you have it you '11 lick me, 
Or I will right well wollop thee ; 
No belt shall go across the main, 
I won it fair without disdain, 
And I '11 boldly fight for it again, 
Says gallant Sayers to Heenan. 

CHORUS. 

" John Bull, 'tis settled as thou seest, 
Between two good men, doubt not the least, 
They 've got a span new belt a piece, 
Has gallant Sayers and Heenan. 

" Both men declared they'd won the fight, 
And many wondered which was right, 
Each man did strive with all his might, 
I mean Tom Sayers and Heenan. 



THE COSTERMONGERS' FREE-AND-EASY. 227 

Tom vowed before lie would give in, 
He would fight and die within the ring ; 
And Heenan swore with oath, 'tis true, 
Big as a Yankee doodle doo, 
He would at the champion go again, 
He'd not be conquer 'd with disdain, 
But carry the belt across the main : 
It won't do, said Sayers to Heenan. 

" Said Tom, while I have strength and health, 
I value none, care not for wealth, 
I did with honour win the belt, 

Said gallant Sayers to Heenan ; 
Then do you think I '11 let it go, 
To the land of Yankee doodle doo ; 
You are silly to imagine such, 
No, no, my boy, I 've seen too much. 
You are, I say, as good a man, 
As ever in the ring did stand, 
Then like a brick with me shake hands, 

Said gallant Sayers to Heenan. 

" Then it was agreed to give to each, 
A stunning span new belt a-piece, 
No grumbling, not a word the least, 

Said gallant Sayers to Heenan. 
A right good man I say you be, 
And you've a belt as well as me, 
But do n't go to the Yankee land, 
And say you 've beat an Englishman. 
Stay in England, years two or three, 
For honour fight and victory, 
If you beat you shall champion be, 

Said gallant Sayers to Heenan. 

" My work is done, I now give in, 
Many a glorious battle I did win, 
Q2 



228 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

So now I' m going to leave the ring, 

Said gallant Sayers to Heenan. 
And, Heenan, fight whoe'er you may, 
I will cheer you with a loud huzza, 
A right good man that man must be, 
Who in the ring can conquer thee ; 
If challenged, onward boldly strut, 
You 've health and strength, and lots of pluck, 
And may you win, I wish you luck, 

Said gallant Sayers to Heenan. 

" There never was before and never will 
Be such a fuss about a mill, 
Why it beats the battle of Bunkers-hill— 

' Twas gallant Sayers and Heenan. 
Tho ' neither beat nor lost 'tis true, 
And each man did his duty do, 
They each a victory did claim, 
And eager was to fight again. 
Now all disputes are at an end, 
Shook hands together, parted friends, 
And Britannia says they are two good men, 
Success to Sayers and Heenan." 

The reader will see from these specimens how 
alien the costermonger race is in sympathy and 
life from the respectable and the well-to-do. 
Their songs are not ours, nor their aims, nor con- 
ventional observances. What wonder is it that 
they leave their wretched cellars, all dirt and 
darkness, and crowd round the public-house ; or 
that at the costermongers' house of call — in the 
midst of an atmosphere of gin and tobacco- 



THE COSTERMONGERS* FREE-AND-EASY. 229 

smoke, and under the influence of songs of very 
questionable merit — the poor lads receive the 
education which is to stamp their character and 
to teach them to grow up Ishmaelites, with 
their hands against every one, and every one's 
hand against them. Society will not educate its 
poor ; wonder not then that they educate them- 
selves, and that after a fashion not very desirable 
in the eyes of the friends of morality, of order, 
and of law. 



THE POLICE-COURT 

Is an attractive lounge to the seedy, the disre- 
putable, the unwashed. Evidently it is a grand 
and refreshing and popular sight to see justice 
doled out in small parcels — to see the righteous 
flourish, and the wicked put to shame. I fear, 
however, it is a feeling of a more personal nature 
that is the chief attraction, after all. Jones goes 
to see what a mess Davis gets into ; Smithes to 
see if Scroggins keeps " mum" like a brick ; the 
many, to retail a little scandal at the expense of 
their neighbours, — if at the expense of a friend, 
of course so much the better. A little before 
ten a crowd is ranged round the police-office, 
waiting to see the prisoners, who have been 
locked up all night, marched into the court, 
which generally commences its operations at ten. 
The court itself offers very little accommodation 
to the most thinking public. At one end of the 
room is the presiding magistrate ; below him is 
the clerk ; on the right of the magistrate is the 



THE POLICE-COURT. 231 

box for complainant and witnesses. Opposite 
him is the dock in which the defendant is 
placed; behind some boards, over which only- 
tall people can see, is the public ; and on the 
magistrate's right are the reporters — or, rather, 
the penny-a-liners — who write on H flimsy," 
and leave "copy" on spec, at all the daily 
paper offices. Let me say a word about these 
exceedingly seedy-looking individuals connected 
with the fourth estate. That they are not better 
dressed is, I take it, their own fault, and arises 
from that daring defiance of conventionalism 
which is so great a characteristic of the lower 
orders of gentlemen connected with the press. 
Let me say, en passant, the public owe these 
men much. It is they who labour with a per- 
severance worthy of a better cause, and that de- 
serves to be successful, to describe the cases 
heard in the police-courts in the most racy and 
tempting terms. In their peculiar phraseology, 
every bachelor who gets into a scrape is a gay 
Lothario, and every young woman that appeals 
to justice is lady-like in manners and interest- 
ing in appearance. The poor wretch that crawls 
along the street, all rouged and decked out 
in finery not her own, is " a dashing Cyprian." 



232 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

Every Irishman is described as " a native of the 
Green Isle;" every man in a red coat, "a 
brave son of Mars ; " every sailor, " a jolly tar ; " 
and a man with a little hair on his chin, or 
under it, is invariably " bearded like the pard ;" 
and if anything causing a smile occurs, — and 
sometimes on the gravest occasions justice will 
even grin, — the court is — so they always put it 
— convulsed with laughter. Knights of the pen, 
a police-case loving- to-read public should be 
grateful to you ! By the side of the reporters 
often sit some three or four of those mischief- 
makers, pettifogging attorneys ; men who, in 
their own opinion, only require a clear stage and 
no favour, and the mere formality of a call 
to the bar, to rival, if not surpass, the fame of a 
Scarlett, or a Brougham, or a Lyndhurst, or an 
Erskine, or even of a Coke himself; and truly 
if to bully, to suppress what is true, and insinu- 
ate what is false — if to gloss over the injustice 
done by a client, and to proclaim aloud that of 
the opposite party — if to speak in an emphatic 
manner and at a most unmerciful length — if to 
browbeat witnesses, mislead the court, and as- 
tonish the weak nerves of their hearers, consti- 
tute a fitness for legal greatness, these gen- 



THE POLICE-COURT. 233 

tlemen have only to enter their names at any of 
the Inns of Court, and eat the requisite number 
of dinners, to win at once undying reputation. 
At the dock appears the trembling culprit, 
guarded sedulously by the police, who quietly 
assume his or her guilt, and do all they can in 
endeavouring to make out a case, — occasionally 
going so far in their zeal as to state things not 
exactly true, the esprit de corps of course leading 
them to aid each other whenever they have a 
chance. 

In a low neighbourhood the principal cases 
heard are those arising from intoxication. On 
this particular morning we will suppose the 
court opens with what is very common, an as- 
sault case between two Irish families who were 
hereditary foes, and who, emigrating, or rather, 
like Eneas, " driven by fate," from the mother 
country at the same time, locate, unfortunately 
for themselves, in the same neighbourhood, — and 
who, in accordance with the well-known remark 
of Horace, continue in St. Giles's the amicable 
quarrels of Tipperary, to the amusement of a con- 
genial neighbourhood, which likes a good fight 
rather than not, but to the intense terror and 
annoyance of all such of her Majesty's lieges as 



234 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

are well disposed. As generally happens, the 
case, after a considerable amount of hard swear- 
ing on both sides, is dismissed, leaving to each 
party the inestimable privilege of paying costs. 
This case creates great interest; complainants 
and defendants are well-known performers, and 
the mob comes to see them as people go to see 
Wright at the Adelphi. When it terminates, 
the Guelphs and Ghibelines leave the court to 
discuss the oft-told tale in the nearest public- 
house. The remaining cases are those of sailors 
and navvies, charged with being drunk and dis- 
orderly, of robberies committed by prostitutes 
when their victims were stupified by beer, and 
of ragged urchins with precocious developments, 
the head and front of whose offending was that 
they " heaved" stones, or that they declined to 
"move on" when particularly requested to do 
so by the police. Poor little outcasts, they are 
better off in jail than on the streets ; and they 
know it, and own to an astonishing number of 
convictions, and gladly look forward to the time 
when they shall be able to achieve greater enor- 
mities and manlier offences against law. These 
cases are soon disposed of; in the majority the 
magistrate hears the complaint, and simply. tells 



THE POLICE-COURT. 235 

the little urchin lie " may go down/ 5 But let 
us not leave yet. That is a publican, and he 
has a charge against this decent-looking woman, 
— she is not a drunkard ;— let us listen. 

" Call Phil. Bird/' says the superintendent. 

As Phil. Bird is in court, there is no need to 
call him, but he is called in stentorian tones 
nevertheless. Policemen, like other men, love 
to hear the sound of their own voices. Phil, im- 
mediately steps into the witness-box. That he 
is a favourite with the beer-drinking public 
around is clear as soon as he kisses the Bible, 
and promises — a promise lightly made, and 
lightly broken — to speak the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, " So help me 
God." 

" Well, Bird/' says the magistrate, " will you 
state your complaint?" 

" Certainly, your honour/' is the reply. " I 
was in my shop on Saturday, when that woman 
(pointing to the trembling female in the dock) 
came in kicking up a row, and asking for her 
husband ; well, she spoke to her husband, and 
wanted to get him away, but her husband did 
not choose to go ; and as she would not leave 
quietly, I was obliged to go and speak to her, 



236 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON, 

upon which she turned round, abusing me, 
saying I had robbed her of her husband, that 
I had got his money, and kept making a great 
many remarks which I was not going to sub- 
mit to, especially as she had got quite a crowd 
of people together, and it was interfering with 
my business ; so I called in policeman Brown, 
and gave her in charge." 

Policeman Brown corroborates the testimony. 
He has yet to win his spurs, and is glad of an 
opportunity of distinguishing himself; besides, 
he has drunk too much of Phil. Bird's fine 
sparkling ales to refuse to do him a little friendly 
turn when he has a chance. 

" Mr. Bird's house is a well-conducted house, 
I believe, Mr. Superintendent?" says the ma- 
gistrate, more from habit than with any view of 
eliciting information. 

" Good, your worship," is the answer, — ec im- 
possible to be better." The superintendent, per- 
haps, has received a small cask of Devonshire 
cider, as a mark of private friendship and per- 
sonal esteem, from the complainant, and this 
might, though I would fain hope not — but flesh 
is grass, and a superintendent of police is but 
flesh after all — have influenced the nature of 



THE POLICE-COURT. 237 

his reply. This is the more probable, as one 
bystander whispers to another, that he believes 
Phil. Bird's is the worst house in the street, a 
remark which seems to excite the cordial ap- 
probation of the party to whom it is addressed 
— a remark also which the superintendent hears, 
and which leads him to cry " silence" in his 
loudest voice and sternest manner. The whis- 
perer is cowed at once. 

Phil. Bird looks gratefully at the superin- 
tendent; the latter is grateful in O'Connell's 
sense, and has a lively sense of favours to come. 
"And the woman, what about her?" asks 
the magistrate. 

" I believe generally she's very well behaved/' 
says policeman Brown, as if on the present 
occasion she had been guilty of an enormous 
offence. 

" Do you know anything against her ?" 
"Not as I know of, yer worship." 
" Well," says the magistrate, addressing the 
poor washerwoman, nervous and " all of a trem- 
ble," as she afterwards confidentially informs a 
friend, looking as if she expected immediate sen- 
tence of death passed upon her, " what do you 
say to the charge ? Mr. Bird says you went and 



238 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

created a disturbance in his shop ; now you had 
no business to do that, you know." 

" I know I had n't, sir," said the poor woman ; 
but here she burst into tears. 

Had she been alone with the magistrate, who 
is a kind-hearted man, and wishes to do what 
is right, she would soon have found her tongue, 
and her warm appeal, told with natural elo- 
quence, because told out of a full heart, would 
soon have reached his own ; but she is fright- 
ened — her energies are paralysed, — she cannot 
speak at all. 

" Oh, Brown," says the magistrate, as if a 
bright thought struck him, "was the woman 
sober ?" 

" Well, I can't swear that she was drunk," 
said Brown, reluctantly. 

This by no means helps to soothe the poor 
woman's nerves, but it drives her to speak in her 
own behalf. 

"Your worship," she exclaims, "I was as 
sober as you are now" — she might have added, 
but she did not, " and a good deal more sober 
than policeman Brown." " I did go to Phil. 
Bird's, but it was to fetch my husband out, who 
had been inveigled in there, and had been led 



THE POLICE-COUKT. 239 

into spending all the money lie had, and getting 
drunk/ 5 

" Well, my good woman, the publican must 
be protected. You should not have created a 
disturbance. I shan't inflict a fine, but you 
must pay the costs. You may go down." 

And so the time of the magistrate is taken 
up ; not one case out of ten comes to anything ; 
but the officiousness of the police is shown ; the 
lazy and good-for-nothing part of the public 
have a gratuitous entertainment provided for 
them, and the criminal class get an initiation 
into the secrets of the law, which robs it of its 
terrors, as in such matters it is especially true 
familiarity breeds contempt. Most of the lads 
and girls — especially the latter — placed at the 
bar, rather seem to like the excitement, and go 
before the bench in their best clothes and with 
their best looks, as they go to the gallery of the 
Yictoria or the Sunday tea-garden. 



THE EAGLE TAVERN 

Is situated in an appropriate locality in the 
City- road, not far from a lunatic asylum, and 
contiguous to a workhouse. From time imme- 
morial the Cockneys have hastened thither to en- 
joy themselves. Children are taught to say — 

" Up and down the City-road, 
In and out the Eagle, 
That 's the way the money goes, 
Pop goes the weasel." 

And the apprentice or clerk, fresh from the 
country, and anxious to see life, generally com- 
mences with a visit to the Grecian Saloon — 
Eagle Tavern. As a rule, I do not think what 
are termed fast men go much to theatres. To. 
sit out a five- act tragedy and then a farce is a 
bore which only quiet old fogies and people of a 
domestic turn can endure ; and even where, as 
in the Grecian Saloon, you have dancing, and 
singing, and drinking added, it is not the fast 
men, but the family parties, that make it pay. 



THE EAGLE TAVERN. 241 

There you see Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robin- 
son, with their respective partners and the dear 
pledges of their well-regulated loves. They come 
early, sit out Jack Shepherd with a resolution 
worthy of a better cause, listen to the singing 
from the Music Hall, return again to witness 
the closing theatrical performances, and enjoy 
all the old stage tricks as if they had not heard 
them for the last fifty years. These worthy 
creatures see a splendour in the Grecian Saloon 
which I do not. Then there are the juvenile 
swells. Anxious mothers in the country, fearing 
the contaminations of London and the ruin it 
has brought on other sons^ lodge them in remote 
Islington, or Hoxton, still more remote. It is 
in vain they do so. The Haymarket may be far 
off, but the Grecian Saloon is near ; and the 
young hopefuls come in at half-price, for six- 
pence, and smoke their cigars, and do their 
pale ale, and adopt the slang and the vices of 
their betters with too much ease. And then 
there are the unfortunates from the City-road, 
with painted faces, brazen looks, and gorgeous 
silks ; mercenary in every thought and feeling, 
and with hearts hard as adamant. God help 
the lad that gets entangled with such as they ! 



242 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

It requires no prophet to foretell his career. 
Embezzlement — first with a view to replace the 
sum appropriated to guilty pleasures,— then, em- 
bezzlement hopelessly continued because once 
begun, — then discovery, and punishment, and 
shame, and despair. Youth must have its plea- 
sures, I know. Young blood is not torpid like 
that of age ; and song and woman will ever be 
dear till time furrows the brow and silvers the 
hair. But why need we seek them where the 
air is contaminated — where the evening's amuse- 
ment will not bear the morning's reflection — 
where, though pleasure lead the way, scattering 
sweet flowers, vice and shame and premature 
old age bring up the rear ? Look at those lads ; 
they cannot have been long emancipated from 
school. The erect collar, the straight hat, the 
long coat, indicate the fact that they belong to 
the Young England party ; and here, listening 
to indifferent songs, and witnessing inferior dra- 
matic performances, and associating with the 
refuse of the other sex, they are learning to be 
men. "What a manhood to look forward to ! And 
if there be no excuse for them, there is still less 
for what I may call the domestic part of the 
audience, — the fat old women with their baskets 



THE EAGLE TAVERN. 243 

filled with prog, the pursy old tradesmen that 
drop in to smoke a pipe, and the various tribes 
of gents and bagsmen on their way home from 
the city. 

Let me say a word on our domestic life. When 
there is so little difference between the majority 
of men and women, why should the line of de- 
marcation be so severely drawn ? We talk very 
prettily about home, sweet home, and poets sing 
its love and purity and charms ; and a popular 
picture is that which the artist draws when he 
groups together the grey-haired grandfather 
and grandmother, seated by the fire, and father 
and mother by their side, and brave lads and 
graceful girls around listening, by the warm 
light of the lamp, to some tale of manly strug- 
gle or Christian chivalry, or lifting up toge- 
ther the glad voice of song. But why should 
your son or mine, immediately he goes out 
into the world and leaves the parental roof, be- 
come a stranger to all this ? If the English- 
man's home be his castle, why should we cast 
out into the ditch, to lie down and die in its 
mire, all who are not of the family ? Think of 
the thousands and thousands of young men who 
yearly come up to town, strangers to every one, 
b 2 



244 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

and with no chance of getting into female society, 
except such as they find at such places as the 
Eagle. These women are not lovelier than you 
meet with in respectable houses — not better edu- 
cated nor more correct in their principles ; yet, 
as by natural instinct one sex seeks the society of 
the other^ we condemn our youth to the company 
of such. Paterfamilias is afraid the young men 
will pay attention to his daughters. Perhaps 
the young lady-daughters fancy it to be beneath 
them to be civil to their father's young men. 
Perhaps the young men themselves believe that 
an honourable connexion is beyond their means, 
and deliberately pursue a career of vice. In all 
these cases, in my humble opinion, very serious 
blunders are involved. The life of a bachelor 
under the circumstances I here allude to is quite 
as costly as that of a married man, without the 
stimulus to exertion which the latter has. Pa- 
terfamilias forgets that the young man he fears 
may be the suitor for his daughter's hand, though 
he is poor to-day, may be comparatively rich to- 
morrow ; and the young ladies should remember 
that it is rather too much to expect that a young 
man just entering upon life will be able to launch 
out in the same style as those who for thirty or 



THE EAGLE TAVERN. 245 

forty years have been pursuing a successful com- 
mercial career. It is our false pride that eats us 
up, — that makes us sneer at love in a cottage, — 
that turns our women into cross old maids, and 
our men into gay Lotharios, very disreputable, 
and, to a certain extent, deliriously gay. I admit 
that we have much more outside respectability, 
but is society the better ? Have we more true 
happiness ? If Wordsworth is correct, " plain 
living and high thinking" go together. But our 
aim is high living, and I fear the thinking is 
very, very plain in consequence. We nurse up 
in our midst, and reverently worship — and de- 
nounce as worse than an infidel every one who 
utters the truth respecting it — an aristocracy 
the richest and most luxurious in the world, — an 
aristocracy which would long ere this have be- 
come intellectually effete, did it not recruit its 
ranks from successful adventurers in the shape of 
lawyers ; and the commercial classes vying with 
this aristocracy in outward show, the effects are 
manifest all over the land, in the general attempts 
to live beyond one's means, and to get into a 
circle supposed to be superior to that in which 
originally we moved. In Germany they manage 
better ; the noble and the trading classes never 



246 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

have a rivalry, the gulf is impassable, and hence 
the home life is less pretentious and happier 
than ours. In England " the toe of the peasant 
comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls 
his kibe." What we want is a return to the 
plain living and high thinking of an age gone 
by ; less show and more reality ; the destruction 
of the wall of partition, either of poverty or of 
false pride, and the widening and enhancing 
the charms of the domestic circle. If now and 
then the result is a marriage not very intelligi- 
ble on pecuniary principles, let us consider even 
that as a lesser evil than that resulting from the 
companionship, on the part of our youths, with 
the women who infest such places as the Eagle, 
and without which it is clear such places could 
not pay. 

I will call evidence as to the character of the 
amusements at the Eagle Tavern. In the par- 
liamentary report on public-houses, I find Mr. 
Balfour is examined respecting it. He says, 
" The most detrimental place of which I know, 
as far as women are concerned, is the Eagle 
Tavern in the City-road. There are gardens, 
and statues round the gardens, and everything 
to attract. There is a large theatre, and there 



THE EAGLE TAVERN. 247 

are theatrical representations during the week. 
I have seen women there whom I have recog- 
nised next day as common street-walkers. The 
gardens are open, with alcoves and boxes on 
each side, and lads and young persons are taken 
in there and plied with drink. The house is 
opened on Sunday evening, but on Sunday even- 
ing there is no dramatic representation nor music. 
I have seen gentlemen come out drunk." On a 
Sunday night when Mr. Balfour visited the 
place, he said, " There were various rooms. 
There is what is called the Chinese-room, the 
ball-room, and the concert-room. They were all 
filled with persons drinking, and I saw a great 
number of female servants, and females of a cer- 
tain description ; there is no doubt upon that 
subject at all." Now, Mr. Conquest, the pre- 
sent proprietor, must have read all this evidence, 
yet I do not see that he has taken any steps to 
reform the evil complained of. It pays, I sup- 
pose, and that is enough. Much money has 
been made by it. The late proprietor retired a 
wealthy man. The present proprietor, we pre- 
sume, trusts to do the same, and if the estab- 
lishment panders to vice, if women date tlieir 
ruin to Sunday evenings there, if mothers see 



248 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

their sons robbed of all that would make them 
decent men owing to their visits there, what's 
the odds? cries the dram- seller, who, like an- 
other Cain, asks if he be his brother's keeper. 

The regular attendants see this not. "It's 
a beautiful place," says Mrs. Smith to Mrs. 
Robinson, iC a'nt it, my dear?" as they sit eat- 
ing questionable sausage rolls, and indulging in 
bottled beer. They see the pictures in the bal- 
cony, and think the gas jets quite miraculous, 
and admire the weak fountains and ambitious 
grottoes — and they laugh even at the comic 
singer, a feat I cannot achieve anyhow. Evi- 
dently the Eagle Tavern audience is of the same 
genus as an Adelphi audience, a people easily 
moved to laughter, and much given to taking 
their meals with them, — a people not prone to 
look before or after, — who would be drowned 
rather than get up and walk into the Ark, and 
who see no chance of their own house being 
burnt down in the fact that their neighbour's 
house is in flames. I do n't believe naturally 
men or women are these dull clods, but custom 
makes them such, and they see no danger, nor 
perhaps is there where they are concerned. 



HIGHBURY BARN. 

A writer in Chambers's Journal some time 
since called attention to the peculiar attractions 
of Highbury Barn. What are these attractions ? 
I confess that the place has connected with it 
the eating and drinking associations of years ; 
that here generations of cockneys have dined ; 
that here, Sunday after Sunday, they have come 
to drink bottled stout and smoke ; that it is ex- 
tensively patronized by shopmen and milliners ; 
that the society is not of the most refined order ; 
and that the love made in it is not of the noblest 
and purest character. I cannot understand how 
Chambers could have been got to puff up such a 
place to the public. I am sure the decent public 
will not thank Chambers for the puff. 

Highbury Barn is an admirable illustration of 
the way in which Acts of Parliament are evaded. 
In 1852 Mr. Hinton applied for and obtained a 
license for music, and he stated in his petition 
on that occasion, that his object was to have the 



250 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

license as an adjunct to dinner-parties, a great 
number of which were held there ; and at that 
time he had no idea whatever of having dancing 
in the place. In 1854, however, a different state 
of things arose, and, from a combination of 
causes, the parties and festivals at Highbury 
Barn fell off, and competition was so great, that 
Mr. Hinton, having a large establishment, in 
which a great deal of capital was invested, was 
compelled to do something to meet the public 
taste, as he says, or, as I might say, to create it. 
Accordingly, on Whit Monday of that year, he 
opened his establishment for musical entertain- 
ments with the band of the Grenadier Guards. 
This was considered by the magistrates as an 
infraction of his agreement with them, and his 
license was refused. But Mr. Hinton was not 
beaten; he had his large capital invested, and 
somehow or other the public must be got into 
his house. An ingenious plan was devised, by 
which Mr. Hinton was enabled to carry on his 
music and dancing without a license, and yet 
be secure from the penalties incurred by the 
breakers of law. There is an assembly called 
Almack's, frequented by the elite of the land, 
held in Willis's Rooms. Those rooms are not 



HIGHBURY BARN. 251 

licensed according to Act of Parliament, yet all 
the leaders of Ion ton there congregate, and they 
would be liable to be taken up as rogues and 
vagabonds under the Act. But the dancing is 
carried on there by an association, under the 
auspices of which tickets are sold. Well, Mr. 
Hinton adopted a similar plan. The Highbury 
Club was formed, and the Club kindly provided 
the youthful votaries of pleasure with the de- 
sired amusement. If we are to believe Mr. Hin- 
ton, the result has not been very advantageous, 
as his receipts on the sale of alcoholic liquors fell 
off £600 — a statement rather difficult to recon- 
cile with his former one, that he found his cus- 
tomers had left him, and that he must do some- 
thing to call them back. Be that as it may, Mr. 
Hinton has now his license, though three clergy- 
men connected with the district concurred in 
stating that parties on leaving the Barn were 
disorderly and riotous, and disturbed the quiet 
of the locality, and that the licensing of that 
establishment would have a very demoralizing 
effect. 

And now let us go to Highbury Barn. As we 
w^alk along Highbury-place, we pass by many a 
father of a family grumbling at the idea of hav- 



252 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

ing his quiet invaded by parties coming honie 
from the Barn ; and yet there was a time, pro- 
bably, when he heard the chimes at midnight ; 
and the chances are, so wretchedly are our lads 
educated, that while the father is at home read- 
ing his religious magazine, the son is being ini- 
tiated into fast life at the Barn. But on we go 
through a dark passage, admirably adapted for a 
garotte walk, till we come to the place of ren- 
dezvous. We pay sixpence and walk in. The 
first thing that strikes us is the Master of the 
Ceremonies. We are amazed, — in the distant 
West never have we met a more distinguished 
swell. His attitude is faultless ; his raven hair 
is parted in the middle ; his dark eye is turned 
in a languishing manner upward to the orchestra. 
In the intervals between the dances he walks up 
and down the room in an abstract and poetic 
manner, and Melancholy marks him for her own. 
You believe in the doctrine of metamorphoses as 
you look at him. He is a star fallen upon evil 
days. Beneath that faultless black dress-coat 
there lies the soul of a Beau Brummel or a Nash. 
Well, then, may there be a tinge of sadness on 
his cheek, and a cloud upon his brow. But let 
us leave him awhile and look about us. What 



HIGHBURY BARN, 253 

a noble room ! we shall not see a finer one in 
London. At one end is a gallery ; at the other 
a raised platform with very comfortable seats 
and tables. All round the room are illustrations 
of oriental scenery, and over the bar is the or- 
chestra. But the place is not so crowded as we 
might expect, and the visitors are quieter than 
in the casinos of the West ; the men and women 
are most of them much younger, — the men, 
many of them, have an exceedingly juvenile ap- 
pearance, and think it fine to dance with young 
ladies of uncertain occupations, and to drink 
brandy-and-water and smoke cigars ; but they 
have yet to cut their wisdom-teeth. As Thackeray 
says, 

" Pretty page with the dimpled chin, 

That never has known the barber's shear, 

All your wish is woman to win ; 

This is the way that boys begin, — 
Wait till you come to forty year. ' ' 

Come here in the summer-time, and the at- 
tendance is then numerous ; and of a Sunday 
evening, on the lawn before the Barn, or in the 
bowers and alcoves by its side, what vows have 
been uttered only to be broken ; and what snares 
have been set for youth, and beauty, and inno- 
cence ; and how many have come here with gay 



254 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

hearts who have left with them bruised beyond 
the power of man to heal ! Even in this room 
itself, what changes have been wrought by the 
magic hand of time ! Where are the Finsbury 
radicals — all beery and Chartist, who here 
dined ; the demagogues who duped them, the 
hopes they cherished, the promises they made ? 
One after another have the bubbles burst, have 
the leaders palpably become shams, have the 
people woke up to disappointment and despair ; 
and yet the nation has still to learn that it 
is only by individual righteousness its salvation 
can be wrought. The dancing, instead of 
speech-making, is a sign of the times. Accom- 
panied as it is by less drinking, let us hope it is 
a favourable sign. Let us judge in the spirit of 
charity and hope. But let us not be -too san- 
guine, — it was during the terrors of the French 
Directory, when the 

" Streets ran so red with the blood of the dead, 
That they blush* d like the wayes of hell," 

that Paris became a city of dancers, and that 
the art reached a climax unknown before or 
since. 

Since the above was written, Highbury Barn 



HIGHBURY BARN. 255 

has passed into new hands. It is now less than 
ever a Barn. It has undergone a gorgeous trans- 
formation, and has passed out of Mr. Hinton's 
hands altogether. It is now said to rival the 
Chateau du Flears. This is an age of progress. 
In a little while it seems to me that the fast 
Englishman will find no occasion to go to Paris 
at all. 



THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. 

A few miles from the terminus of one of our 
metropolitan railways is an immense plot of 
buildings, looking more like a town than a sin- 
gle house. It is a stately pile beautifully situ- 
ated, and I doubt not many a care-worn Cockney, 
as he has been hurried past it by the rail, has 
often wished that he had a little niche in it where 
he could come of a night after the day's toil was 
over, and smell the sweet flowers and the fresh 
grass ; yet the place is a lunatic asylum, and 
whilst I write there are in it fourteen hundred 
men and women bereft of reason, unaccountable 
for their actions, and shut up away from their 
fellows. Very often the number is much 
greater, and yet this does not contain all the 
pauper lunatics of the metropolitan county. 
There is another equally large on another line 
of railway, and there are Wandsworth, Bedlam, 
and others in London itself. 

It would do some of the noisy poor, who waste 



THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. 257 

their time in low pot-houses talking of their 
rights — when all that a man has a right to is 
what he can get — good to look over such a place 
as Colney Hatch. There are pauper lunatics 
lodged in a palace, waited on by skilful male 
and female attendants, living in light and airy 
galleries, as clean as wax- work, with four meals 
a day, and with every want supplied. I am 
sure every Englishman must confess that our 
asylums and hospitals are the glory of our land. 
None can deny the active and practical charac- 
ter of the philanthropy of our days. You may 
depend upon it, nine-tenths of the men and 
women here were never so well-fed, lodged, 
and cared for before. Their day commences at 
six, and terminates at eight. Such of them as 
can be usefully employed are, in cleaning the 
wards, and in various domestic duties ; but they 
have plenty of spare time — the women for sew- 
ing, or knitting, and the men for out-door exer- 
cise or reading. In one ward I found some good 
books on the table, such as Boswell's Johnson, 
Gibbon's Life, popular works on science, and 
Punch y and several magazines. The only woman 
I saw reading was an old one, with a Bible be- 
fore her. The women are by far more trouble- 



258 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

some than the men. Directly I went into one 
ward, a middle-aged woman advanced towards 
me, with one arm uplifted, exclaiming, " Here 
comes my husband, King John/' Another fe- 
male, still plainer and more elderly, seemed in- 
clined to address to me endearments of a still 
tenderer character. It was clear that they re- 
tained the instincts of their sex without its 
clearness. Yet there were some to whom the 
novelty of a stranger offered no excitement — 
who sat huddled up by the window, with scowling 
eyes and dishevelled hair, flesh-and-blood pic- 
tures of despair. This one had led a gay life — - 
what a termination for a votary of pleasure ! That 
one had become what she was by drinking ; this 
one again by the grand passion, which underlies 
all history, past and present — all philosophy, ob- 
jective or subjective — all religion, true or false. 
But, hark ! it is a quarter to one, and that is the 
dinner bell. We enter the hall, a room capable 
of holding seven or eight hundred persons. Some 
enormous Yorkshire puddings, with some excel- 
lent beef, are borne by several eager assistants 
(patients) on to the tables in the middle of the 
room ; they are immediately cut up, and each 
portion is enough for one person's dinner. "When 



THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. 259 

the tables set apart for the women are served, the 
door opens, and in rush the poor creatures in a 
manner that shows they have not lost their relish 
for food. On the men's side similar preparations 
are made, and then in they rush ; and when all 
are seated, a blessing is asked, and dinner com- 
mences : it does not last long. As soon as the 
patients have cut up their pudding, the knives 
and forks are carefully removed — and in a very 
few minutes a signal is made ; they all rise — 
thanks are returned, and the meal is over — such 
as have not had enough generally managing to 
collar a bit of pudding as they march out. This 
is very short work, you say, but it is quite long 
enough. You will hear a woman screaming now 
and then, short as it is, and an attempt will be 
sure to be made to get over to the men's side be- 
fore the meal is over. You see enough to sadden 
you, but the worst cases you do not see— they 
are wisely concealed from the curious eye ; it is 
enough to know that they are humanely tended. 
Why should we care to look on such ? Going 
down a stair-case, I saw through a glass door a 
poor creature suffering from suicidal monomania ; 
night and day she had to be watched, and 
such had been the case for years. In her sad 
s 2 



260 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

face there was visible to the most superficial ob- 
server 

" The settled gloom 
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore." 

Well might she wish to lay down her life, that 
her crazed brain had rendered insupportable. 

It is a sad sight that of an assembly of insane 
men and women. At the asylum to which I 
refer they are very humane people, and very 
successful in their treatment of the distressing 
cases constantly occurring, and twice a year — at 
Christmas and Midsummer — they give an enter- 
tainment, at which the better-behaved lunatics 
attend, and seemingly enjoy themselves very 
much. I was recently at one, and when I ar- 
rived, found that a field adjoining the asylum 
had been set apart for the purpose. There were 
about five hundred lunatics, male and female, 
present, and besides there were several gentle- 
men and ladies present, spectators like myself. 
It was a lovely afternoon, and there was music 
and dancing, and playing cricket, and battle- 
dore and shuttlecock, and all the various enjoy- 
ments of out-door life ; but in all these matters 
I found the attendants appeared to take the 
initiative ; still the poor creatures seemed to 



THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. 261 

enjoy themselves much, and were happy in their 
way. Yet the pleasure-seeker will not go to 
such a spectacle again. I do not say the vulgar 
idea of the maniac was realized ; on the contrary, 
the poor creatures seemed decent and very well 
behaved — but there was a pitiable want of fine 
physical development, there were in abundance 
crooked forms and stunted figures. You do 
not like to see what a poor thing is man when 
his reason is dethroned. Of course the refractory 
patients we do not see on such occasions, but, 
looking up at a window, I saw one woman's 
face — as she viewed the scene in which she 
might not participate — so wild in its anger and 
hopeless in its despair, that that face haunts me 
yet. It set me thinking how a woman could 
get into that state. Perhaps her father and 
mother, ignorant of physiological laws, had 
married, and she had been the result; or the 
ignorance of her friends, or her own ignorance— 
or the competition of modern life — or the wrong- 
doing of others — had precipitated a catastrophe 
which otherwise might never have occurred, and 
thus society pays indirectly for its ignorance far 
more than it would have to do for a genuine 
useful education. Think of what desolated homes 



262 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

these poor creatures form a portion. Remem- 
ber what a fearful cost it is to the respectable 
hard-working amongst us, who can barely man- 
age to make two ends meet, to have to rear such 
palatial residences for our pauper lunatics. The 
asylum of which I write in its erection cost the 
county an enormous sum — in its maintenance it 
does ditto— and I hear it is now in an insecure 
state, firm as it looks, and that the county of 
Middlesex will have to spend upon it some tens 
of thousands of pounds more. 

I once visited this place in the winter-time ; 
a large hall was lighted up, and there were 
some very pretty dissolving views exhibited, 
and there was dancing and music and eating 
and drinking going on. The room was covered 
with laurels and flowers and banners, and, of 
course, there were many ladies and gentlemen 
present, and the place had a cheerful air ; and 
all confessed it was a good thing to give the 
poor creatures a little innocent amusement. But 
only think of dancing with lunatics — and such 
ugly ones too — and being held by the button- 
hole by some wild-eyed ancient mariner. Cole- 
ridge might have come here and written : 



THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. 263 

u He held him with his glistening eye, 
The wedding gnest stood still, 
And listen 'd like a child — 
The mariner has his will." 

But if the wedding guest stays here long, he 
would not be in a fit state for the wedding — and 
still less would lie be so if he goes over the 
building. What a contrast the present treatment 
of lunatics is to that which prevailed till lately ! 
The exposure of the wretched system pursued at 
Bethlem, which, took place in 1814, in conse- 
quence of the investigation of a parliamentary 
committee, appears to have been productive of 
great good. The visitors thus describe one of 
the women's galleries : — " One of the side-rooms 
contained about ten patients, each chained by 
one arm or leg to the wall, the chain allowing 
them merely to stand up by the bench or form 
fixed to the wall, or sit down again. The 
nakedness of each patient was covered by a 
blanket gown only. The blanket gown is a 
blanket formed something like a dressing gown, 
with nothing to fasten it in parts. The feet 
even were naked." Many women were locked 
up in cells, naked and chained, on straw, with 
only one blanket for a covering ; and the win- 



264 THE NIGHT SIDE OF LONDON. 

dows being unglazed, the light in winter was 
shut out for the sake of warmth. In the men's 
rooms, their nakedness and their mode of confine- 
ment, continues the report from which we have 
already quoted, gave this room the appearance 
of a dog-kennel. At this period the committee for 
months together made no inspection of the in- 
mates. The house surgeon was in an insane 
state himself, and still oftener drunk ; and the 
keepers were often in the latter state ; yet at 
this very time the governors spent £600 in 
opposing a bill for regulating mad-houses, and 
I dare say they cried out lustily, No centraliza- 
tion ! — no interference with vested interests ! as 
enlightened Englishmen and parochial dignita- 
ries are wont to do in our days. 

Could we not do without lunatic asylums 
if society gave up its drinking customs ? Not 
exactly ; but their number might be very much 
decreased. Two-thirds of our lunatics become 
so through drink. " They are very bad at first, 
sir," said one of my informants to me, "but 
after a little while they get quieter, and perhaps 
they are cured in two or three months." And 
yet I find all these lunatics are supplied with 
beer. " They has two half-pints a day, sir, and 



THE LUNATIC ASYLUM. 265 

when they work they gets two half-pints more, 
and very good beer it is, sir," continued my 
informant, " as strong as any man need drink." 
Now is not this preposterous ? Men who drink 
till they become lunatics should be taught to do 
without it ; but they are allowed their beer even 
in the asylum, and when they go out they begin 
drinking again, and of course relapse. Thus we 
keep feeding our lunatic asylums, at the very 
time we profess to cure lunatics. I admit these 
places are in many respects well managed — that 
the buildings are commodious — that the atten- 
tion is good — that the governors are humane, 
and the medical officers vigilant ; but which is 
the truer humanity, to take care of the man 
when in a lunatic asylum, or to keep him out of 
it altogether ? 



THE END. 



JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



022 129 416 6, 



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